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srcrmEs is romance PBiLozoar and 

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CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS TO 
GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 



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THE INDEBTEDNESS OP CHAUCER'S 

TEOILUS AND CEISEYDE 

TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE'S 

HISTOEIA TEOJANA 



BY 



GEORGE L. HAMILTON, A.M. 

SOMETIME FELLOW IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

PROFESSOR OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES IN TRINITY COLLEGE 

NORTH CAROLINA 




^^St^^ . 



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THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, Agents 

66 Fifth Avenue 

1903 
All rights refierved 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRtSS, 

Two Copies Received 

m 21 1903 

Copyright Entry 
>6lA5S CL. /^Xc, No 

COPY B. _j 






COPYKIGHT, 190^ 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped January, 1903. 



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Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



I 



PEEFACE 

The following study is a dissertation offered 
in the spring of 1900 to the Faculty of Phi- 
losophy of Columbia University, in fulfilment 
of one of the requirements for the degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy. My original plan was 
to make an investigation of Chaucer's indebt- 
edness to the French and Latin writers who 
were his predecessors in telling the story of 
Troilus and Criseyde, but owing to the fact 
that Joly's edition of the Boman de Troie is 
so very incomplete and uncritical, I confined 
my study to the work of Guido, citing from 
the French poem only when it was necessary 
to quote illustrative parallel passages. I have 
used the 1486 Strasburg edition of the His- 
toria Trojana, but I have been able to collate 
the passages cited with the readings in the 



VI PREFACE 

best and oldest manuscripts of the work in 
the Bibhotheque Nationale and the British 
Museum, without, however, finding cause to 
make changes which were essential. 

Studies made subsequent to the writing of 
this dissertation, upon the relations between 
versions of Benoit's work and the plagiary of 
Guido, may lead me, at a later date, to mod- 
ify certain statements. 

I desire to thank Professor Henry A. Todd 
for his kindness and care in reading over, and 
giving helpful criticism on, the manuscript of 
this book. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 3 

But out of Latin in my tongue it wryte " 
(II. 8-14).i 

He frequently calls attention to the close- 
ness of the translation he is making of his 
original, which he mentions as if it were 
his sole authority, whether he refers to the 
writer or his work : — 

" And of his song nought only the sentence, 
As writ myn autour called LoUius, 
But pleynly, save our tonges difference, 

1 Cf . L. of G. TF., A, 264-266 : — 
" Hast thou nat mad in English eek the book 
How that Crisseyde Troilus forsook 
In shewinge how that wemen han don mis ? " 

But in the second form of the same passage the God of 
Love reproaches the poet, as if he had expressed merely 
his own " sentement " in that work. L. of G. W., B, 332- 
334: — 

" And of Criseyde thou hast seyd as thee liste ; 
That maketh men to wommen lasse triste 
That ben as trewe as ever was any steel." 

In the Retraction at the end of the Persones Tale, " the 
book of Troilus " is the first mentioned in the list " of 
my translacions and endytinges of worldly vanitees." 
Canterbury Tales, Group I, 1084-1085. 



4 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

I dar wel sayn, in al that Troilus 

Seyde in his song ; lo ! every word right thus 

As I shal seyn ; and who-so list it here, 

Lo! next this vers, he may it finden here" 

(I. 393-399). 
" Wherefore I nil have neither thank ne blame 
Of al this werk, but pray yow mekely, 
Disblameth me, if any word be lame 
For as myn auctor seyde, so seye I. 
Eek though I speke of love unfelingly. 
No wonder is ; for it no-thing of-newe is, 
A blind man can-not juggen wel in hewis" 

(II. 15-21).! 

^CLL.ofG. TF., A, 340: — 
" Or elles sir, for that this man is nyce, 
He may translate a thing in no malyce, 
But for he useth bokes for to make, 
And takth non heed of what matere he take ; 
Therfor he wroot the Rose and eek Crisseyde 
Of innocence, and niste what he seyde ; 
Or him was boden make thilke tweye 
Of som persone, and durst hit nat with-seye ; 
For he hath writen many a book er this, 
He ne hath doon nat so grevously amis 
To translaten that olde clerkes wryten, 
As thogh that he of malyce wolde endyten 
Despyt of love, and had him-self y-wroght.'* 

Cf. T. and C, HI. 1328-1336. 



TO GUIDO DELLE C0L0:N^NE 5 

"Myn auctor shal I folwen, if I conne " (II. 
49). 

"And what she thoughte somwhat shal I wryte, 
As to myn auctor listeth for to endyte " (II. 
699-700). 

" For ther was som epistel hem bitwene, 
That wolde, as seyth myn auctor, wel contene 
An hondred vers, of which him list not wryte ; 
( Var. Neigh half this book, of which him list 

not wryte;) 
How sholde I thanne a lyne of it endyte " 
(III. 501-504). 

" Nought list myn auctor fully to declare, 
What that she thoughte whan he seyde so. 
That Troilus was out of town y-fare. 
As if he seyde ther-of sooth or no" (III. 
575-5T8). 

" Though that I tarie a yeer, somtyme I moot 
After myn auctor, tellen hir gladnesse. 
As wel as I have told hir hevinesse " (III. 
1195-1197). 

" Thourgh yow have I seyd fully in my song 
Th'effect and joye of Troilus servyse, 
Al be that ther was som disese among, 



6 CHAUCER'S INDEBTED:NrESS 

As to myn auctor listeth to devyse " ^ (III. 
1814-1817). 

"And after this the story telleth us " (V. 1037). 

" But trewely, the story telleth us " (V. 1051). 

And again lie is careful to give notice 
that he is abridging his original: — 

" [She] gan a lettre wryte, 
Of which to telle in short ^ is myn entente 
Th'effect, as fer as I can understonde " (II. 
1218-1220). 

1 In II. 31-32 : — 

" As the story will devyse 
How Troilus com to his lady grace." 
and V. 1093-1094: — 

" Ne me ne list this sely womman chyde 
Ferther than the story wol devyse." 

reference is made to the tale as it is found in Chaucer's 
own narrative, as he took it from his sources. Cf . T. and 
C, V. 1772-1776. 

2 On the frequency of this phrase and its equivalents, 
" shortly to tell," and " shortly to say," in Chaucer's 
poems, cf. T. E.. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, 1892, 
Vol. II. pp. 95-96, 547-548. In T. and C. (III. 548, 1117, 
1156 ; V. 1009, 1826), except in the passage cited in the 
text, such expressions are used as mere chevilles. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 7 

"But, sooth, is, though I can not tellen al. 
As can myn auctor, of his excellence. 
Yet have I seyd, and, god to-forn, I shal 
In every-thing al hoolly his sentence " (III. 
1324-1327). 

And yet, as if he did not see the con- 
tradiction of his own statements, he is 
careful to note that he consulted various 
works in writing his poem : — 

" But whan his shame gan somwhat to passe, 
His resons, as I may my rymes holde, 
I yow wol telle, as techen bokes olde" (III. 
89-91). 

" Criseyde, which that f elte hir thus y-take. 
As writen clerkes in hir bokes olde. 
Right as an aspes leef she gan to quake. 
Whan she him felte hir in his armes folde" 
(III. 1198-1201). 

" And trewely, how longe is was bitwene. 
That she for-sook him for this Diomede, 
Ther is non auctor telleth it, I wene. 
Take every man now to his bokes hede ; 
He shal no terme linden, out of drede " (V. 
1086-1090). 



8 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

" For how Criseyde Troilus forsook, 
Or at the leste, how that she was unkinde, 
Mot hennes-forth ben matere of my book, 
As wry ten folk thorugh which it is in minde. 
Alias ! that they shulde ever cause finde 
To speke hir harm ; and if they on hir lye, 
Y-wis, hem-self sholde han the vilayne " (IV. 
15-21). 

" And treweliche, as writen wel I finde. 
That al this thing was seyd of good entente ; 
And that hir herte trewe was and kinde 
Towardes him, and spak right as she mente, 
And that she starf for wo neigh, whan she 

wente. 
And was in purpos ever to be trewe ; 
Thus writen they that of hir werkes knewe " 
(IV. 1415-1421). 

" Lo, trewely, they writen that hir syen. 
That Paradys stood formed in hir yen" (V. 
816-817). 

" I finde eek in the stories elles-where " (V. 
1044). 

" In alle nedes, for the tonnes werre. 
He was, and ay the firste in armes dight ; 



TO GUIBO BELLE COLONNE 9 

And certeynly, but-if that bokes erre, 
Save Ector, most y-drad of any wight " (III. 
1772-1775). 

"And trewely, as men in bokes rede" (V. 19). 

" This Diomede, as bokes us declare " (V. 799). 

"For these bokes wol me shende" (V. 1060). 

" For whom, as olde bokes tellen us, 
Was maad swich wo, that tonge it may not 
telle" (V. 1562-1563). 

" In many cruel batayle, out of drede, 
Of Troilus, this ilke noble knight, 
As men may in these olde bokes rede. 
Was sene his knighthod and his grete might " 
(V. 1751-1754). 

" Ye may hir gilt in othere bokes see " (V. 
1776). 

The three passages, — 

"And certainly in story it is y-founde" (V. 
834), 

" But certeyn is, to purpos for to go. 
That in this whyle, as writ en is in geste, 
He say his lady som-tyme ; and also 
She with him spak" (III. 449-451), 



10 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

" And ofte tyme, I finde that they mette 
With blody strokes and with wordes grete, 
Assayings how hir speres weren whette ; 
And god it woot, with many a cruel hete 
Gan Troilus upon his helm to-bete" (V. 
1758-1762), 

are too indefinite in their statements to 
specify whether one or more authorities are 
referred to. 

Again, he does not care to give on his own 
authority statements which he has not found 
vouched for elsewhere : — 

"But whether that she children hadde or 
noon, 
I rede it nought ; therefore I lete it goon " 
(I. 132-133). 

" But how it was, certayn, can I not seye, 
If that his lady understood not this. 
Or f eyned hir she niste, oon of the tweye ; 
But wel I rede that, by no maner weye, 
Ne semed it as that she of him roughte. 
Nor of his peyne, or what-so-ever he thoughte " 
(I. 492-497). 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 11 

unless it may be upon a matter of his own 
experience : — 

" But as we may alday our-selven see, 
Through, more wode or col, the more fyr ; 
Right so encrees of hope, of what it be, 
Therwith f ul of te encreseth eek desyr ; 
Or, as an ook cometh of a litel spyr, 
So through this lettre, which that she him sente, 
Encresen gan desyr, of which he brente. 
Wherfore I seye alwey, that day and night 
This Troilus gan to desiren more 
Than he dide erst, thurgh hope " i (II. 1331- 
1340). 

He makes a point of referring his readers 
who are interested in the fate of Troy to 
the books devoted to that subject: — 

" But how this toun com to destruccioun 
Ne falleth nough to purpos me to telle ; 

^ As illustrative of Chaucer's process of composition it 
may be noted that IT. 1331-1337 are not based upon the 
corresponding stanza in the Filostrato (III. 130) ; the 
comparison 11. 1335 is taken from the Liber Paraboloruyn 
of Alain de Lille (Migue, Patrologia, vol. CCX. col. 



12 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

For it were here a long disgressioun 
Fro my matere, and for yow long to dwelle. 
But the Troyane gestes, as they felle, 
In Omer, or in Dares, or in Byte^ 
Who-so that can, may rede hem as they 
wryte" (I. 141-147). 

and, as the theme of his poem is the love 
of Troilus for Criseyde, those who wish to 
know of his warlike exploits must go else- 
where for information : — 

" And if I hadde y -taken for to wryte 
The armes of this ilke worthy man, 
Than wolde I of his hatailles endyte. 
But for that I to wryte first hegan 
Of his love, I have seyd as that I can. 
His worthy dedes, who-so list hem here, 
Reed Dares, he can tell hem alle y-fere (V. 
1765-1771). 

Lydgate, in the '' Prologue " to his 
Tragedies, a free paraphrase in verse of 

583; cf. E. Koeppel, Herrig's ArcMv, vol. XC. p. 150), 
while the conclusion II. 1338-1340 is a translation of the 
mere statement of fact by Boccaccio. (^Fil., UI. 131, 1-3 ; 
cf. 130, 7.) 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 13 

the French prose version by Laurent de 
Premierfait of Boccaccio's De Casihus 
Virorum} in his " list " of Chaucer's works, 
notes that : — 

'' In youthe he made a translation 
Of a boke which called is Trophe 
In Lumbard tonge as men may rede and se 
And in our vulgare, long or that he dyed 
Gave it to name of Troylus and Creseyde." ^ 

1 T. Warton, History of English Poetry, ed. 1840, vol. 
II. pp. 277-278, 320. P. Paris, Les manuscripts frangois de 
la Bibliotheque du Roi, Paris, 1836-1848, vol. I. pp. 233- 
260; II. 231-244; V. 119-122. A. Hortis, Studi sulle 
opere latine del Boccaccio, Trieste, 1879, pp. 638-642. 
E. Koeppel, Laurents und Lydgates Bearbeitungen von 
Boccaccio's Casihus Virorum, Munich, 1885. 

2 The Tragedies gathered hy Jhon Bochas of all such 
Princes as fell from theyr estates throughe the mutability of 
Fortune since the Creadon of A dam until his time ; wherein 
may be seen what vices bring mene to destruccion, with nota- 
ble warninges home the like may he avoydde. Translated 
into English by John Lidgate, MonTce of Burye, edition of 
J. Wayland, 1558 ; cf. T. F. Dibdin, Typographical An- 
tiquities, 1816, vol. m. pp. 530-531. This seems to be the 
"undated blaok-letter edition" cited by Skeat. Minor 
Poems of Chaucer, p. x. 



14 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

Again J in his version of the Historia 
Trojana of Guido delle Colonne, in the 
translation of the critical discussion of the 
writers upon the Trojan war, Homer, Virgil, 
Ovid, Dictys, and Dares, such as he found 
it in his original,^ depending, doubtless, 
upon the list in Chaucer's Hous of Fame^ 
he adds without comment a new name, — 

1 Warton was tiii certain whether Lydgate's Troy -book 
was a direct translation from the work of Guido, or from 
a French version of the Latin original. (Hist, of Eng. 
Poetry, 1840, vol. II. p. 292.) A. Joly thought that the 
Latin original had been amplified by the use of Benoit's 
poem. (Benoit de Ste. More et le Roman de Troie ou les 
metamorphoses d'Homere et de Vepope'e greco-latine au moyen- 
dge, vol. II. pp. 494-496.) Henry Bradshaw regarded the 
Latin work as the original of this, as well as the other 
English versions. (Proceedings of the Cambridge Anti- 
quarian Soc, vol. III.) Sidney Lee, evidently upon the 
sole authority of the title-page, stated that "Lydgate 
mainly paraphrased ' Guido di Colonne's Historia de Bella 
Trojano ' and perhaps Dares Phrygius and Dictys Creten- 
sis." (Diet, of Nat. Biog., vol. XXXIV. p. 312.) Schick 
seems to think that a French source was used in conjunc- 
tion with the Latin work. (Lydgate's Temple of Glass, 
p. cxvii. ; cf. Troy-book, sig. b 2 verso, col. 1.) 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 15 

"And of this syege wrote eke Lollius."^ 

And when he comes to the episode of Tro- 
ilus and Criseyde in his original, he states 
that he will not give it in full : — 

" Syth my maister Chaucer here afore 
In this matter hath so well him bore, 
In his boke of Troylus and Creseyde 
Which he mayde longe or that he deyde."^ 

In the first edition of the works of 
Chancer which contained anything in the 
way of a commentary,^ that of Speght, 

1 The Auncient Historie and onely Trewe and sincere 
Cronicle of the Warres betwixte the Grecians and Troyanes. 
. . . Wrytten hy Daretus a Troyan, and Dictus a Grecian 
. . . and Digested in Latyn hy the lerned Guydo de Colump- 
nis and sythes translated hy John Lid gate Moncke of Burye. 
Thomas Marshe, 1555, sig. b 2 verso, col. 1. Cf. Dibdin, 
I.e., vol. IV. pp. 494-496. I cite this as Troy-hook. 

2 I.e., sig. E, 2 verso, col. 1. 

3 The Troilus had already been printed in the " Works 
of Chaucer," in the editions of Pynson, 1526 ; of W. 
Thynne, 1532 and 1542 ; and the reprints of the latter 
in 1550 and 1561; as well as separately by Caxton, ah. 
1483 ; Wynkyn de Worde, 1517 ; Pynson, 1526. (Henry 

• Bradshaw, ap. Francis Thynne' s Animadversions, ed. F. J. 



16 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

published in 1598, in the section of the 
introduction which treats of the works of 
the poet, the editor writes: — 

" Troilus and Creseid called Throphee in 
the Lumbard tongue, translated not verbatim, 
but the argument thence taken, and most 
cunningly amplified by Chaucer." ^ 

This magisterial sentence seems to imply 
that Speght had information of a definite 
nature upon the sources of the Troilus 
other than that given in Lydgate's lines; 
but his restatement of the same matter in 
the corresponding passage, in his edition 
of 1602, promptly disposes of such a sug- 
gestion. 

" Troilus and Creseid called Throphe in the 
Lumbard tongue was translated out of Latin, as 
in the Preface to the Seconde booke of Troilus 
and Creseid he conf esseth in these words, — 

Furnivall, 1875, p. 70 n. Cf . Skeat in Works of Chaucer, 
vol. II. pp. Ixxv-Lxxvi.) 

1 WorJces of Chaucer, 1598, sig. c 1 recto. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 17 

' To every lover I me excuse, 
That of no sentement I this endite, 
But out of Latin in my tonge it write. ' " ^ 

His identification of Lollius as " an Ital- 
ian Historiographer borne in the citie of 
Urbine " in his list of Most of the Authors 
cited hy G. Chaucer in his works hy name 
deelaredy^ has the merit of being specific 
as to the author, if not supplying infor- 
mation about his work and the language 
in which it was written. 

1 Workes of Chaucer, 1602, sig. c 1 recto. 

2 Cf . Francis Thynne's Animadversions, p. 71. "The 
fourthe thinge ys, that in the catalogue of the auctours, 
you have omytted manye auctours vouched by Chaucer ; 
and therefore dyd rightlye intitle yt, ' most,' and not all, 
of the auctours cited by geffrye Chawcer." In the edition 
of 1602, Speght obviated this criticism by writing, " The 
authors cited by G. Chaucer in his workes by name 
declared." Dryden's information about the source of 
Chaucer's Troilus is due to Speght ( Works of Dryden, ed, 
Scott-Saintsbury, vol. VI. p. 225), to whom he is indebted 
in other ways. Cf. F. H. Tupper, Mod. Lang. Notes, vol. 
XII. pp. 347-352 ; cf . Douce, Illustrations of Shakespeare 
(1807), p. 64. 



18 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

Sir Henry Savile, in his edition of the 
work De Causa Dei contra Pelagas of 
Bishop Thomas Bradwardine (1290(?)-1349), 
published in 1618, suggested that the dis- 
course upon predestination in the Troilus 
(IV. 966-1078) and in the Nonne Preestes 
Tale^ where the author's name is men- 
tioned, bespoke an acquaintance with his 
work.^ 

Sir Francis Kinaston, who in 1635 pub- 
lished the first two books of his Latin ver- 
sion of the Troilus^ in which the metrical 
structure of the original was preserved in 



1 C. T., Group B, 4432. 

2 Life of Chaucer in Preface to Urry's edition of 1721 ; 
also quotation in Testimonies of same edition. Speght 
gives as the Argument of the poem, " In which discourse 
Chaucer liberally treateth of the divine purveiaunce." 
(Workes of Chaucer, 1598; sig. c 5 verso; ed. 1602; sig. 
Bb 5 recto.) The author of the Testament of Love had 
already referred to the same passage as authoritative on 
the matter. (Book III. ch. IV. 248 ff. in W. W. Skeat, 
Chaucerian and Other Pieces, p. 123.) Cf. Lounsbury, 
Studies in Chaucer, vol. I. pp. 202-204. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 19 

the number of lines to a stanza, of sylla- 
bles to the line, and in the order of the 
rimes/ in his English commentary on the 
poem, noting the great difference between 
the story of certain characters in the Tro- 
jan legend, as found in Chaucer's poem, 
and that in other sources, writes : — 

"Some do not improbably conjecture that 
Chaucer^ in writing the loves and lives of Troi- 
lus and Creseid, did rather glance at some pri- 
vate persons, as one of king Edward the third's 
sons, and a lady of the court, his paramour; 
then [than] follow Horner^ Bares Phyrius^ or 
any author writing the history of those times ; 
for first, it cannot be imagined that Chaucer^ 
being soe great a learned scholler, could be 
ignorant of the story ; next that he should soe 
mistake as to make Creseid the daughter of 
Calchus, the soothsayer, who was the daughter 
of one Chryses, and there uppon called Chry- 
seis, whereas her right name was Astjmome ; 
then there should be any love between Troilus 

^ Amorum Troili et Creseidce, Libri duo priores, 
Oxonise, 1635; cf. Lounsbury, I.e., vol. III. pp. 77-78. 



20 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

and her ; especially that Chaucer should per- 
sonate her as a widdow, whereas she was a votary 
to Diana. "^ 

Timothy Thomas, in his preface to Urry's 
edition of Chaucer, published in 1721, has 
little to add concerning the sources of the 
Troilus ; he repeats Speght's statements 
about "Lollius" and "Trophe" and then 
goes on to say: — 

"He has not contented himself with a bare 
translation of his Author, but hath added 
several things of his own, and borrowed from 

1 The Loves of Troilus and Creseid, written by Chaucer; 
with a commentary, by Sir Francis Kinaston, never before 
published. London. Printed for and sold by F. G. 
Waldron, MDCCXVL pp. 7-8 ; (first part) cf . Lounsbury, 
Lc, vol. III. pp. 81-82. Urry, in preparing his edition of 
Chaucer, had drawn notes from the apparently unique 
manuscript of Kinaston's complete work, and these were 
used by Thomas. Cf . Preface to Urry's Chaucer, sig. m ; 
Glossary, p. 47. The Loves, etc., pp. i.-ii., vii., xi.-xii. 
After Waldron's death, we find the manuscript in posses- 
sion of W. S. Singer. Cf . Works of Chaucer. Cheswick, 
1822, vol. I. pp. xx.-xxi., n. j Notes and Queries, I. 5, 
252. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 21 

others what he thought proper for the Embel- 
lishment of this work, and particularly the song 
of Troilus in the First Book is a Translation of 
that song in Petrarch which begins, S' amor 
non e, Che dunqu' e quel ch' io sento?" 

and he then refers to the comments of 
^Savile and Kinaston, which have been 
mentioned above, and in the Glossary under 
LoUius, he writes : — 

" An Italian Historiographer born at Urbino, 
who lived under the Emperors Macrinus and 
Heliogabalus, in the beginning of the Third 
Century, is said to have written the History of 
His Own Time^ and also the Life of the Emperor 
Diadumenus, the Son of Macrinus.'^ ^ 

It was Thomas Tyrwhitt, to whom stu- 
dents of Chaucer owe the most for the 
elucidation of the poet's work, particularly 
of the Canterbury Tales, who was the first 

^ Tyrwhitt showed clearly that Thomas was the editor 
of the 1721 Chaucer, after the death of Urry. The Poeti- 
cal Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Ed. T. Tyrwhitt. Lon- 
don, 1855, p. vii. and note n. 



22 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

to point out the immediate source of the 
story of the poem. In his Essay on the 
Language and Versification of Chaucer, pref- 
aced to his edition of the Canterhury Tales, 
he stated that in his opinion " Chaucer was 
to the full as much obliged to Boccacce in 
his Troilus as in his Knight's Tale.'" ^ In 
his notes and glossary he shows that he has 
made a careful comparison of the English 
poem with the Italian original/ points out 
the indebtedness to the De Consolatione 
Philosophice of Boethius in the passage 
treating of predestination/ notices that the 
sonnet of Petrarch was translated as the 
work of Lollius/ whose identity he leaves 
as a puzzle/ and would identify Chaucer's 
own mention of Trophe, 

" At bothe the worldes endes saith Trophee 
In stede of boundes he a pillar set," ^ 

1 Poetical Works of G. Chaucer, p. xxxix. note 62. 

2 Ihid., pp. 182, 190, 205, 209, 457, 471, 476, 483, 486, 495. 

3 lUd., p. 457. 4 lUd., pp. 209, 483. ^ jud., pp. 209, 479. . 
6 C. T., 14123-14124. Ed. Tyrwhitt. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 23 

and Lydgate's Trophe, with the Filostrato} 
He also suggests that the ^^ Latin" from 
which language Chaucer stated he had 
translated his poem was Italian, as Boc- 
caccio in the Teseide^ — to which the Eng- 
lish poet was under obligations in his 
Parlement of Foules^ Anelida and Arcite,^ 

1 Poetical Works of Chaucer, pp. 203, 209, 495. 

2 Teseide, II. 2, 4. Cf. Poetical Works, etc., p. liv. n. 

3 Poetical Works, etc., p. 179 ; cf . ten Brink, Chau- 
cer. Studien zur Geschichte seiner Entwickelung, pp. 125- 
128. 

^ ten Brink, I.e., pp. 49-53, 56. On Palamon and 
Arcite, Cliaucer's early translation of the Teseide, which, 
it has been conjectured, was written in seven-verse 
stanzas, and utilized in some of his latter works ; cf . ten 
Brink, I.e., pp. 39-70 ; J. Koch, Eng. Stud., I. pp. 249 ff. ; 
XXVn. pp. 3, 12 ; A. W. Pollard, Glohe Chaucer, pp. xxvi.- 
xxvii. ; F. J. Mather, An English Miscellany Presented to 
Dr. Furnivall, pp. 301 ff. Tyrwhitt, who suggested that 
Palamon and Arcite was a translation of the Teseida (I.e., 
p. xxxix. and note 62, liii.), did not note the parallel 
passages in Anelida and Arcite, and supposed that the 
later poem was written before Chaucer's acquaintance 
with Boccaccio's work (I.e., p. 445), and W. Hertzberg 
adopted this view (Chaucer's Canterhury-gesehichten, 1866, 
pp. 61, 595), which was successfully combated by ten 



24 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

Troilus^ and the Knight's TaW — had re- 
ferred to his own language as "Latino 
volgare." ^ 

Warton, in his History of English Poetry, 
quotes Lydgate's statement concerning the 
source of the poem, which he thinks is in 
conflict with what Chaucer himself says 
about the language of the work he is trans- 
lating, speaks of the conjecture of Speght, 
whose name he does not mention, upon 
"Lollius," refers to the historian of the 
third century, LoUius Urbicus, none of 
whose works are extant, although Du 
Cange puts him in his list of authorities 
in his Glossarium, who, however, "could 
not be Chaucer's Lollius," who in the 

Brink (I.e., pp. 49, 53-56), whose theory on this point is 
accepted by Mather (I.e., pp. 307-312). 

1 Poet. Works, p. 182. 

2 TTiynnes Animadversions, ed. Furnivall, p. 43 ; Poet. 
Works, pp. liii.-lvi., 178-182 ; T. Warton, Hist, of Eng. 
Poetry, 1774, vol. I. pp. 344, 357. 

3 Poet. Works, p. 209. A view accepted by Skeat. 
Works of Chaucer, vol. XL p. 468. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 25 

Hous of Fame is placed amongst the his- 
torians of Troy, and calls attention to the 
fact that the names Monesteo, Rupheo, and 
Phebuseo^ denoted an Italian original. He 
points out a number of the passages ^ in the 
Troilus in which Chaucer comments upon 
the closeness with which he follows his 
authority; and mentions the indebtedness 
of the English poem to Boethius, Petrarch, 
and Bradwardine — the last as if assured 
as the others.^ 

At a later date, from information re- 
ceived from Tyrwhitt,* he knew that the 
Filostrato was the direct source of the 
larger part of the English poem,^ whereas 
before, knowing merely the title of Boc- 

1 T. and a, II. 51-54. 

2 T. and a, II. 10; III. 576, 1330, 1823. 

3 T. Warton, I.e., vol. I. pp. 384-388. 

^Oa Warton's great indebtedness to Tyrwhitt, cf. 
Ritson, Observations on the First Three Volumes of the 
History of English Poetry, 1782, pp. 30, 31, 33, 48. On 
Warton's ignorance of Italian, ibid., pp. 30, 38. 

6 Hist, of Eng. Poetry, 1840, vol. II. p. 162, note. 



26 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

caccio's work, he had thought that it 
only treated of the same subject.-^ 

William Godwin, in his Life of ChaKr 
cer, published in 1803, which " may, in- 
deed, be declared to deserve the distinction 
of being the most worthless piece of bi- 
ography in the English language,"^ disputes 
Tyrwhitt's view in every particular. He 
asserts that without question the Troilus 
is a translation of the Latin work Trophe 
of LoUius, not the Lollius Urbicus of the 
third century, but a contemporary of 
Wace and Thomas, of Becket,^ the author, 
also, of the original of the story of 
Palamon and Arcite^ He asks whether 
it is probable that Chaucer would consult 
a less known work of Boccaccio, when in 
the Clerk's Tale he does not show an 

1 Hist. ofEng. Poetry, 1778, vol. I, p. 385 ; II. p. 25. 

2 Lounsbury, I.e., vol. I. p. 194. 

8 W. Godwin, Life of Chaucer, 1804, vol. I. pp. 419, 
429-430, 437-438. 

* l.c.j vol. III. p. 17, note. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 27 

acquaintance with the Decameron, the 
work by which the author is generally 
known .^ 

W. W. Singer, in the introduction to 
the poems of Chaucer, published in 1822 
in the Chiswick collection of English 
poets, shows that he had made a careful 
comparison of the English and Italian 
poems, stating that the Troilus was " for 
the most part a translation of the Filo- 
strata of Boccaccio, but with many varia- 
tions and large additions, amounting to 
no less than 2700 verses." Chaucer's 
references to "Lollius" and to "Latin" 
were surprising, " for nothing can be 
more certain than that Boccaccio was his 
original -, the fable and characters are the 

^Z.c, vol. n. p. 473. Sir Walter Scott, whose re- 
view of Godwin's book in the Edinburgh Review, can 
only find its equal for severity in Lowell's criticism on 
Masson's Milton, on this point rejected Tyrwhitt's opin- 
ion in favor of Godwin's. ( Works of Dryden, ed. Scott- 
Saintsbury, vol. VI. p. 243.) 



28 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

same in both poems, and numerous pas- 
sages of the Filostrato are literally trans- 
lated." 1 

After such a clear statement of the 
case as this, it was certainly "far ritroso 
calle/* when, twenty years later, G. L. 
Craik in his Sketches of the History of 
Literature and Learning in England from 
the Norman Conquest to the Accession of 
Elizaheth, not only refused to credit the 
Filostrato as being the source of the 
Troilus, but asserted that Chaucer was 
quite ignorant of the Italian language/ a 
position in conflict with the undisputed 
statements of Lydgate and W. Thynne.^ 
Again Sir Harris Nicolas, in his Life of 
Chaucer, prefixed to the Aldine edition of 

1 The Poems of G. Chaucer, Chiswick, 1822, vol. I. 
p. xix. ; cf . p. xvi. 

2 Sketches, etc., 1844, vol. II. pp. 47-53. Again in his 
History of English Literature, 1861, vol. I. pp. 272-276. 

3 With Lydgate's statement concerning the source of 
the Troilus may be compared his problematical lines con- 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 29 

Chaucer, in 1845, took the same position, 
remarking that those who thought differ- 
ently were but " indiscriminate worship- 
pers of genius who endow their idols 
with all human attainments." ^ 

cerning a translation made by Chaucer, Tragedies, etc., 
sig. a 2 verso, col. 1. 

" He wrote also full many a day agone 
Dant in English, himselfe so doth expresse.'* 
On interpretation of his passage, cf. W. W. Skeat's to- 
tally wrong one, Chaucer's Minor Poems, pp. xi-xii. ; 
2d ed., p. 477. E. Koeppel, iawreni Premier/aits und J. 
Lyd gates Bearheitungen, etc., p. 82. Anglia, vol. XIII. 
p. 186. Lounsbury, I.e., vol. II. p. 425. Depending 
upon this statement, Speght in his 1598 Chaucer gives in 
the list of the poet's works, Dantem Italum transtulit 
followed by the statement, Petrarchce qucedam transtulit, 
(sig. c 1 recto), but both these statements are omitted in 
the 1602 edition. Thynne, who, as has been noticed 
(p. 24, n. 2), was the first to point out the source of the 
Knight's Tale, has elsewhere the statement, "unleste a 
manne be a good saxoniste, frenche and Italyane linguiste 
(from whence Chaucer has borrowed manye words)." 
Animadversions, p. 31 ; cf. p. 43. Against Craik's opin- 
ion, cf. Fiedler, Herrigs ArcMv, vol. II. p. 151 ; Kiss- 
ner, Chaucer, etc., p. 6 ; ten Brink, Chaucer, p. 186. 

1 Works of Chaucer . . . 1845, vol. I. p. 25; Yet 
he quotes Lydgate's statement on the matter (p. 100.), 



30 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

In his edition of Chaucer published 
1854-1856, R. BeU showed that he could 
believe the evidence of his own eyes. In 
his Memoir of Chaucer he notices that 
no such author "called LoUius/' or book 
" called Trophe/' had ever been discov- 
ered, accepting the opinion of Tyrwhitt 
upon the first point to the prejudice of 
that of Godwin.-^ He did not consider 
seriously Nicolas' s opinion upon Chaucer's 
knowledge of Italian ; besides making the 
general statement that " the substance of 
the poem, which Chaucer amplified and 
altered, is to be found in the Filostrato 
of Boccaccio," ^ in the Introduction to the 

and Tyrwhitt's remarks on the source of the Troilus, in 
his Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer^ 
which is reprinted in this edition, is found later on Q.c, 
pp. 225-226, n.). This note is omitted in Morris's edi- 
tion of 1866, where Skeat's treatment of the versification 
is substituted for that of Tyrwhitt (vol. I. p. 172). 

1 Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, edited by Rob- 
ert Bell, vol. I. p. 14 ; cf . vol. m. p. 10. 

2 Z.C., vol. I. p. 14. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 31 

Troilus, the general features of the two 
poems are compared and at the same time 
examples of Chaucer's mode of translation 
are noted, while parallel passages from 
the Italian poem are cited in notes to 
the text.^ It is noted that the earliest 



source of the story wa^s^_"aZprose chron- 
icle ... by Guido de Colonna," which 
must have been drawn "from some met- 
rical romance extant in his time," and 
the fact "that Chaucer elsewhere mentions 
Guido denoted that he was acquainted 
with him "either through his works or 
reputation." Lydgate's " Trophe " is ex- 
plained as "a name denoting Troylus's 
change of fortune." ^ 

It was by others than English editors 

1 Z.C., vol. y. pp. 10-14, 17-254 ; VI. pp. 5-52. 

2 I.e., vol. V. pp. 9-10. The collaboration of Rev. 
J. M. Jephson in this edition may be noted. The infor- 
mation of the editors about Lollius Urbicns, the Roman 
de Troilus, — which they regard as the original of Guido, 
when, in fact, it is a translation of Boccaccio's poem, — 



32 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

of Chaucer that the next step forward 
was made, in the study of the sources of 
the Troilus. In 1858 L. Moland and C. 
D'Hericault, in the Introduction to their 
edition of Nouvelles Francoises en prose 
du XI V^ siecUy in giving a detailed ac- 
count of the literary history of Troilus, 
were the first to point out that the Filo- 
strato had its antecedents in the Roman 
de Troie of Benoit de Sainte-More/ and 
Guido delle Colonne's^ Historia Trojana,^ 
and had no doubt that the English poem 
was in the main an imitation of the Italian 
poem.* To explain the name Lollius they 
suggested that as the late fourteenth-cen- 
tury French romance Le Livre de Troilus 

and the Historia Trojana, as an authority on the siege 
of Thebes, is taken from Warton without acknowledg- 
ment. Cf. E. Koeppel, Lydgate's Story of Thebes, p. 17. 

1 " Benoit de Saint Maur," as they write it (^Nou- 
velles Francois, pp. lix, Ix.). 

2 " Guido delle Columne," " Guy des Colonnes," (Z.c, 
p. Ixxx.). 3 l.c.j pp. lix.-xciii. * I.e., xci.-xcviii. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 33 

was stated by its author to be a translation 
of the Filostrato "compose par un poethe 
florentin nomme Petrarqiie," ^ Chaucer, not 
knowing the name of the author of his 
original, adopted that of Lollius.^ Their 
suggestion, which was only hazarded in a 
note, concerning Lydgate's Trojphe^ can 
only be given in their own words: "In- 
diquons que tropJie represente assez bien le 
vieux mot trufe, truphe (bourde, trompe- 
rie), Italianise. Chaucer a-t-il truphe Lyd- 
gate ou Lydgate le public." ^ 

Sandras was the first to suggest that 
the work of Benoit might be the direct 
source of certain passages in the Troilus, 
in his Etude sur Chaucer coiisidere comme 
imitateur des trouveres, published in 1859, 
printing a number of passages from the 
unedited Roman de Troie to substantiate 

1 I.e., pp. ci, 120. 2 ic.f xcviii.-c. 

3 I.e., p. c, n. They were not acquainted with Chau- 
cer's own mention of " Trophe." 



34 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

his conjecture, but his parallel citations 
are neither definite nor full enough to 
be conclusive. He, too, thinks that Boc- 
caccio is hidden under the name of Lol- 
lius.^ 

In 1862 A. Ebert, in his brief recension 
of the work of Sandras, expressed the 
opinion that while there was reason to 
justify the assumption that Chaucer had 
recourse to other works than the Filos- 
tratOj there was not evidence enough to 
show whether it was to the work of 
Benoit or to that of Guido — which he 
regarded as an original production — he 
was indebted for the introduction of epi- 
sodes, not found in the Italian poem.^ 

In 1867 Kissner clearly showed by the 
citation of parallel passages that the Eng- 
lish poem was in large part a translation 

1 :^tude, etc., pp. 42-50, 263-283 ; cf . Hertzberg, Jahr. 
der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, vol. VI. p. 202. 

2 Jahr. f. rom. u. engl. Lit., vol. IV. pp. 89-91. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 35 

of Boccaccio's work, in which the order 
of the stanzas, the verses, and even the 
rime of the original were adhered to as 
closely as possible,^ took the same posi- 
tion as Ebert in regard to Chaucer's other 
sources for the story, considering Guido, 
however, as a plagiarist.^ He believed 
that by Lollius, Boccaccio was intended, — 
a deliberate expedient used elsewhere by 
the English poet to mystify his readers." 
" Trophe," mentioned by Chaucer in the 
Monkes Tale, he supposed referred to the 
De Casibus Virorum of Boccaccio.* 

In the same year Henry Morley, in his 

^ A. Kissner, Chaucer in seinen Beziehungen zur 
italienischen Literature, Bonn, 1867, pp. 12-22, 25-58. 

2 I.e., pp. 22-25. 

^ I.e., pp. 7-9. Cf. Hertzberg, Chancers Canterhury- 
geschichten, 1866, pp. 42, 44 ; Jalir. f. rom. u. engl. Lit., 
vol. YIII. pp. 154-155. Henry Bradshaw independently 
reached the same conclnsion, G. W. Prothero, Memoir of 
H. Bradshaw, p. 216. For a conflicting view, cf. Louns- 
bury, I.e., vol. II. p. 413. 

^ Kissner, I.e., p. 8. 



36 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

English Writers^ gave a comparative analy- 
sis of the two poems^ noting that Chaucer's 
version " was more than half as long 
again as its original/' ^ and proved to 
his own satisfaction that " Latin " was 
Italian,^ that the English poet^ in " his 
labour towards the elevation of the Filo- 
strata,'' ^ " with a parable of Scripture in 
his mind, out of Lolium, the Latin for a 
tare, probably contrived for Boccaccio a 
name that he thought justly significant/'* 
and that Lydgate referred to the Filostrato 
as " Trophe/' because " it evidently points 
to Criseyde's perfidy, and is related to 
TpoTTrj, Sb turning." ^ He also noted that 
the additions to the narrative concerning 

1 English Writers, 1867, vol. II. Part I. pp. 237-243. 
To give preciseness to his comparison, without regard 
to the amount utilized by the English poet, he states 
that the Filostrato contains 5352 lines, and the Troilus, 
8251. Of. Rossetti, Comparison, etc., p. iii. ; Skeat, Works 
of Chaucer, 1894, vol. II. pp. xlix-1. 

2 Lc, p. 243. 3 ic., p. 244, n. ^ ic., p. 243. 
6 Lc, p. 221, n. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 37 

the actions of the heroine in the Greek 
camp, and her dialogue with Diomedes and 
with her father/ show that Chaucer was 
acquainted with either the work of Benoit 
or the Latin version of Guido.^ 

In a communication to the Athenceum 
for Sept. 26, 1868, are set forth the views 
of W. M. Eossetti, who regarded Lydgate's 
'' Trophe " as the English " trophy," a 
trophy or victim of love, which corre- 
sponds to Boccaccio's own definition of the 
title of the Filostrato ; and hence the term 
" Trophe " is applied to that work by Lyd- 
gate. Chaucer, as the French translator, 
considered Petrarch its author, and referred 
to him as Lollius in the Troilus and the 
Hous of Fame, — though he introduces 
him with his real name in the Clerhes Tale 
— because one of his correspondents ad- 

1 This is one of the points wrongly made by Sandras 
and rectified by Hertzberg, Jahrbuch der Shakespeare- 
% vol. VI. p. 202. 2 i^c., p. 243. 



38 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

dressed him as Laelius.^ This communi- 
cation led Latham, in the next number of 
the same journal, to offer his most ingen- 
ious explanation of Lollius. He suggested 
that Chaucer got the idea that Lollius was 
a writer on the Trojan war by the misin- 
terpretation prevalent in Chaucer's time 
of the opening lines of one of the Epistles 
of Horace, 

" Trojani belli scrip torem, maxime Lolli 
Dum tu declamas Romse, Prseneste relegi " 
(Ep. I, 2), 

which gave the idea that " the name of 
the person addressed had become attached 
to the person written about." ^ 

^ Rossetti, in his Chaucer's Troylus and Cryseyde 
compared with Boccaccio's Filostrato, 1873, pp. vii.-viii., 
gives up his explanation of Lollius in favor of that of 
Latham, but still credits his own explanation of Trophe. 

'^Athenceum, Oct. 3, 1868, p. 433. Rossetti, Com- 
parison, etc., p. vii., writes that this suggestion was " made 
or rather repeated" in the place cited; but I am not 
acquainted with its earlier mention. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONXE 39 

Hertzberg, in his review of Kissner's 
book, accepted his thesis in full/ and to 
obviate the difficulty of the " Trophe " 
question suggested that the line on the 
Monkes Tale 

" At both the worldes endes, saith Trophe " 

should be read, 

" At both the Worldes endes, as Trophe," 

even though the false reading was as old 
as Lydgate's time.^ 

Ten Brink, in his literary study of 
Chaucer, accepted Tyrwhitt's suggestion 
that by " Latin " Italian was meant, Eos- 
setti's explanation of Lydgate's "Trophe" 
and Hertzberg's correction of the Chau- 
cerian text,^ and in confirmation of La- 
tham's conjecture about " Lollius " — a 

'^Jahr.f. rom. u. engl if?., vol. VIII. (1866), pp. 156- 
162. H.c.,^.im. 

^ Chaucer, Studien zur Geschichte seiner Entwickelung, 
pp. 68-70, 182-184. 



40 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

conclusion he had arrived at independently 
— suggested that it was not due to a cur- 
rent misinterpretation, but that in the 
manuscript of Horace used by Chaucer, 
the incorrect readings scrip torum and te 
legi substituted for scrvptorem and relegi} 
He also noticed that details in the Tro- 
ilus were due to the work of either Be- 

1 Z.c, pp. 85-87. Skeat, Works of Chaucer, ed. 1878, 
vol. I., p. 18, n. Chaucer, The Minor Poems, 1888, p. 359, 
Works of Chaucer, 1894 (vol. III. p. 278), and Rossetti 
(I.e., p. 359). Works of Chaucer, 1894 (vol. III. p. 278) 
and Rossetti (I.e., p. vii.) accept Latham's suggestion as 
almost a certainty. Joly (Benoit de Ste. Maure, etc., vol. 
I. pp. 216-217), and Hertzberg (Shakespeare Jahr. vol. 
VI., p. 201, n. 2) concur in general statement of both 
Latham and ten Brink, without expressing their precise 
position in regard to secondary matters. Yet Lounsbury 
(I.e., vol. II. p. 410) states that " By no stretch of lan- 
guage can [it] be regarded as probable." Yet the main 
premise for this opinion — to wit, that when Chaucer 
could translate a philosophical work, the De Consolatione 
of Boethius, he would not have made the slip of mistak- 
ing a genitive for an ablative — is somewhat vitiated, 
when we consider that a French translation of the Latin 
work was Chaucer's original. Cf. Rossetti, Comparison, 
p. vii., n. ; M. H. Liddell, Glohe Chaucer, p. xl. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 41 

noit or Guido or of both, but the sugges- 
tion is confessedly not his own.^ 

In 1869-1870, by the quite indepen- 
dent investigations of Dunger and Joly, 
the impudent plagiarisim of the Boman 
de Troie by Guido delle Colonne was put 
beyond a doubt by extensive comparisons 
of the French and Latin works ;^ but 

iZ.c, p. 85. 

2 A. Joly, Benoit de Ste. Maure et le Roman de Troie, 
1870-1871, vol. II. 470-484. H. Dunger, Die Sage vom 
trojanischen Kriege in den Bearheitungen des Mittelalters 
und ihren antiken Quellen, Leipzig, 1869, pp. 39, 61-64. 
Tyrwhitt was acquainted with both works, and suspected 
that the Roman de Troie was the direct source of Guido's 
work, but " a full discussion of the point by a comparison 
of Guido's work with the Roman de Troye, would require 
more time and pains than I am inclined to bestow on it " 
(note to C. T, 15147, Works of Chaucer, p. 204. Cf. 
note to C. T, 14914, p. 204, pp. 471, 486). Warton in his 
first volume of his History of English Poetry (1774) only 
mentioned Guido as the author of an original work upon 
the Troy legend, for the sources of which he accepts the 
author's own statements, and ''from which Chaucer de- 
rived his ideas about the Trojan story" (vol. I. (1774), 
pp. 126-127 ; cf . pp. 138, 385, vol. 11. pp. 82-83, 91-92, 97, 
on acquaintance with Guido's work ; cf . E. Koeppel, Lyd- 



42 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

these two scholars in their orientations of 
the whole mediaeval Troy legend, only 
touched incidentally upon the matter of 
the original of Chaucer's Troilus, and 
failed to notice the secondary sources 

gate's Story of Thebes, pp. 16-17), and knew of Benoit's 
work and its subject at only second hand (vol. I. p. 136). 
In a note in the second volume, from information unques- 
tionably received from Tyrwhitt, he speaks of " the an- 
cient metrical one of Benoit, to whom, I believe, Colonna 
is much indebted" (vol. 11. (1778) p. 99, n.). Francis 
Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakespeare, published in 1807, 
stated that he had made the comparison suggested by 
Tyrwhitt, and found that Guido had " only translated the 
Norman writer into Latin " (vol. II. pp. 65-66), but his 
correct conclusion, even if the detailed results were not 
published, did not seem to be generally known, even 
though it found its way into such a popular work as Dun- 
lop's History of Fiction (pp. 175-176, ed. 1845). In 1857 
Fromman expressed the opinion that Guido's work was 
nothing but a translation of the French ipoem. (Germania, 
vol. II. p. 52), while in 1858 Moland and d'Hericault 
(I.e., p. Ixxx.) regarded the Latin work as " une amplifi- 
cation de I'ouvrage de Daures — mais aux merites de la- 
quelle Benoit de Saint-Maur n'a pas per contribue." Pey 
in the next year (Jahr.f. rom. und engl. Lit, I. 228) fostered 
the theory that both Guido and Benoit based their works 
upon an original unabridged text of Dares, which has not 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 43 

which contributed to the story of the 
English poem.^ Joiy? to be sure, men- 
tioned Latham's and ten Brink's sugges- 
tion as if it were his own, and proposed 
that Lydgate's line, 

" Of a boke whiche called is Trophe," 

if restored to its probably true reading, 
which could so easily have been cor- 
rupted, 

" Of a boke whiche called is Strophe," 

come down to us. This view was accepted by Ebert (I.e., 
vol. IV. p. 90) and Cholevius (GeschicTite der deutscJien 
Poesie, vol. I. pp. 111-112) ; but regarded with doubt by 
Kissner (I.e., p. 23, n.), and one would have thought 
finally disposed of by Hertzberg (I.e., pp. 187-194), who 
like Barth (Guido de Columna, p. 19) and Morf (Rom., 
vol. XXI. pp. 18-21) denied Guido even an acquaintance 
with the Dares as we have it; if Koerting (Dictys and 
Dares, 1874, pp. 67, 95 ; Boccaccio, 1881, pp. 586-587) and 
Greif (Die mittelalterlichen Bearbeitungen der Trojanersage, 
p. 62) had not adopted it as a thesis the maintenance of 
which was all important, and if Constans (Hist, de la lit- 
terature et langue frauQaise, vol. I. p. 215, n. 1) did not 
seem half inclined to accept their conclusions. 
1 Joly, I.C., p. 515 ; Dunger, I.e., p. 36. 



44 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

would refer to the Italian poem, thus de- 
noted on account of its metrical structure.^ 

W. Hertzberg in a study upon the Tro- 
ilus legend independently reached the 
same general conclusions, and, in com- 
menting upon Kissner's results, noted that 
while only two-thirds of the 5288 lines 
of the Filostrato had been used in the 
Troilus, that the English poem contained 
8251 lines. He further pointed out three 
passages in the Troilus which might 
equally as well have come from either 
the work of Benoit or Guido, and three 
others which from the similarity of lan- 
guage could only have had their sources 
in the French poem.^ 

F. Mamroth in his work, G. Chaucer, 
seine zeit und Seine Abhaengigkeit von Boc- 

1 Joly, Z.C., p. 216-217, 493. 

^Jahr. der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, vol. VL 
(1871), pp. 201-205. I refer to this article as Hertz- 
berg, Lc, 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOXNE 45 

caccio, although not doubting the Italian 
source of the Troilus, upon the authority 
of Bell and Hertzberg, still thought God- 
win's view worthy of an analysis.^ 

W. M. Rossetti said the final word 
upon the Filostrato-Troiliis question by 
the publication in 1873 of his line-for-line 
comparison of the two poems, showing 
that somewhat less than a third of the 
English poem was taken dnectly from 
the Filostrato? Although he gives an 
analysis of the Troilus story in the 
)Eomcm de Troie for the sake of setting 
it off against that given in the Italian 
poem, he nowhere suggests that Chaucer 
adopted hints from the French poet, or 
his Latin plagiarist — concerning whose 
work he accepts the opinion of Moland 
and d'Hericault.^ 

1 G. Chaucer, etc., Berlin, 1872, pp. 49 ff. 

2 Comparison, etc., p. iii. 

^ I. c, pp. v.-vi. R. Fischer's Die Troilus-Epen von BoC' 



46 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

In 1867 J. Koch expressed the opinion 
that Chaucer possessed Boccaccio's works, 
of which he made such liberal use in his 
own poems in a manuscript or manuscripts 
which did not give the name of the author, 
and in the case of the Filostrato, as in 
that of other works, in order to give it an 
author, attributed it to one Lollius, whose 
name he may have come upon in the lines 
of Horace, cited by Latham and ten 
Brink.i 

In 1877 M. Landau, who supplemented 
Kissner's results by researches in the com- 
parison of the English and Italian poems, 
noting that Chaucer had translated liter- 
ally some 1200 verses of his original, 
advocated the view that the English 

caccio und Chaucer (in Zu den Kunstformen des mittelalter- 
lichen Epos. Weiner Beitrdge zur englischen Philologies 
vol. IX. (1899) pp. 217-370) offers nothing new on the 
question. It is a comparison of the aesthetic value of two 
poems, stated in percentages. 

1 Englische Studien, vol. I. pp. 291-292. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 47 

poet was ashamed to mention a modern 
writer in Italian as Boccaccio, and there- 
fore had adopted a Latin name which he 
cited as his authority.^ 

Ten Brink, in his Geschiehte der Eng- 
lisclien Litteratur, published in 1893, notes 
where Chaucer had made use of the work of 
Benoit at one point in his narrative, "Und 
begierig greift er aus Benoits Darstellung 
Ziige auf, die zur Entschuldigung seiner 
Heldin gereichen konnen. Erst dem von 
Troilus verwundeten Diomed schenkt sie, 
von Mitgefiihl geruhrt, ihr Herz ; und 
der Untreue folgt die Keue auf dem 
Fusse/' ^ and in discussing the sources of 
the Legend of Good Women, he calls at- 
tention to the fact that if in this poem 
Chaucer has preferred Guido as a source 
rather than Benoit, it is the opposite of 
what he did in the Troilus. ^ 

^ Boccaccio, pp. 92-94. 

2 Geschiehte, vol. 11. p. 95. ^l.c, p. 116. 



48 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

In 1892 Lounsbury, wlio seemed to 
think that the work of Guido was one of 
the English poet's sources for the Legend^ 
stated that "Chaucer knew nothing of 
Benoit." ^ In 1894 Skeat, who in earlier 
contributions^ when he had occasion to 
touch on the subject, accepted without 
comment the views of others upon the 
Filostrato-Troilus and "Lollius" questions 
with his usual disregard of the antecedent 
work of others, writing as if he were the 
first to suggest the possible indebtedness 
of Chaucer to Guido, pointed out details 
in the Troilus which he thought had their 
origin in the Latin work, and cited a 
number of passages of the Historia Tro- 
jana from an inferior manuscript to prove 
his thesis. " Trophe, " as mentioned by 
both Chaucer and Lydgate, according to 

1 Studies in Chaucer, vol. 11. pp. 313-314. 

2 I.e., vol. II. p. 309. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 49 

his view, was Guide's work;^ but he did 
not fail to note where, in the Troilus, 
Chaucer was unquestionably indebted to 
the Roman de Troie? 

W. J. Courthope in his History of Eng- 
lish Poetry regarded the use of Lollius as 
a deliberate mystification, on the part of 
Chaucer, to mislead his readers. As the 
authority of a work to which he wished to 
give a moral tone, Boccaccio "even if he 
had not provoked the censure of the church, 
would have carried no historical weight " ; 
and "therefore to create for his imagi- 
nary history, an imaginary historian," he 
referred to "the Latin of the supposed 
Trojan historian Lollius." To fill out 
the story as he found it in the Filo- 
strato, "he borrowed numerous incidents 
and touches of a highly dramatic kind 



1 Works of Chaucer, vol. 11. pp. liii.-lxi. 

2 I.e., pp. Ixi.-lxii., Ixxx. 



50 CHAUCER'S INDEBTED:^ESS 

from the Historia Trojana of Guido delle 
IColonne.^i 

Finally^ J. W. Broatch^ in an article^ 
in which he is assuredly "amicus Pla- 
tonis," totally denies the claims of the 
Historia as set forth by Skeat, as one of 
the joint sources of the English poem. 
Unfortunately he rests his case mainly 
upon his own arbitrary statements, which 
are not, and cannot be substantiated by 
citations from the work of either Benoit 
or Guido. 



Of the known authors to whom Chaucer 
could have had recourse for the story of 

1 Hist ofEng. Poetry y vol. I. pp. 262-263. 

2 Journal of Germanic Philology, vol. 11. (1898) pp. 
14-28. W. S. McCormick seems to accept Broatch's con- 
clusion when he states, " For the development of the 
story in Book V. Chaucer evidently consulted the Roman 
de Troie of Benoit de Sainte-More, possibly also the 
Historia Troiana of Guido delle Colonne." Globe Chaucer, 
p. xli. ; cf . pp. 543, 546, 553. 



TO GUIDO DELLE C0L0X:N^E 51 

the Troilus and Criseyde, Guido delle 
Colonne^ is the only one whom he men- 
tions by name in any of his works. In the 
Hous of Fame,^ in the list of the historians 
of Troy, he groups together 

" the great Omeer ; 
And with him Dares and Tytus 
Before, and eek he, Lollius, 
And Guido eek de Columpnis;" 

and by this mention of LoUins, removes 
any chance for the conjecture that by this 
name Guido was meant. Again, in his 
Legend of Good Women, at the beginning 
of the story of Hypsipyle and Medea, he 
mentions Guido as his authority. 

"Tessalye, as Guido telleth us."^ 

1 The name always appears as " de Columpnis " in 
autograph signatures : (F. Torraca, Giornale Dantesco, 
vol. V. pp. 271-277 ; Studi su la lirica italiana del Due- 
cento, 1902, pp. 449-452), and in the best manuscripts of 
the Historia. ^ H. of F., 1466-1469. 

3 L. of G. W., 1396. Skeat was the first, in 1889, to 
restore the correct manuscript reading, " Guido," which 



52 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

I And when he leaves him to follow another 
I author, he notifies his readers : — 

" Al be this not rehersed of Guido, 
Yet seith Ovyde in his Epistles so." ^ 

A careful study of the subject has shown 
the truthfulness of the poet's statement, 
and pointed out his exact indebtedness to 
both the authors mentioned.^ 

had before always been printed as " Ovyde." The Legend 
of Good Women, 1889, pp. xxxi., 167. Works of G, 
Chaucer, 1894, vol. II. p. liv. 

1 L. of G. W., 1464-1465. 

2 Bech, Anglia, vol. V. pp. 324, 329-330, on Guido as 
source ; cf. Legend of Good Women, p. xxxi. ; Lounsbury, 
I.e., vol. II. p. 313 ; J. W. Broatch, Journal of Germanic 
Philology, vol. II. pp. 22-23. Chaucer, in following Guido, 
who substituted Ovid's " Thessalia " for Benoit's " Grece," 
perhaps to escape the difficulty found in the French poet's 
transformation of Dares's " Peloponneso " into " Penolope " 
(R. de T., 712 ; on source of name in Dares, cf . Dun- 
ger, I.e., p. 15 ; Koerting, Dictys and Dares, p. 73), which 
gave a Middle English translator trouble {The Seege of 
Troye, edited by C. H. A. Wager, 1889, v. 25 ; cf. p. lix.), 
although acquainted with Dares, does not, here or else- 
where (L. of G. W., 1397, 1400, 1409 ; cf. p. 167), correct 
"Pelleus " into "Pelias" (cf. Hertzberg, Z.c, p. 121; Joly, 
Z.C., vol. I. p. 222, n.; H. Morf, Rom, vol. XXI. p. 89). 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 53 

And in the Hous of Fame he refers 
anonymously to him as an authority for 
an opinion which he himself does not seem 
to accept. 

" But yit I gan ful wel espye, 
Betwix hem was a litel envye, 
Oon seyde, Omere made lyes, 
Feyninge in his poetryes, 
And was to Grekes favorable ; 
Therfor held he hit but fable." ^ 

For in Benoit's poem there is no passage 
corresponding in the least to Guido's long 
invective against Homer. 

After telling of the treacherous slaying 
of Troilus by his Greek opponent, Guido 
goes on : — 

" Sed o homere qui in libris tuis achillem tot 
laudibus tot preconiis extulisti ; quae probabilis 
ratio te induxit ut achillem tantis probitatis 

Lydgate, who had followed others in this mistake in his 
Troy-hook, repeats it in his Tragedies (sig. c 1 verso, 
col. 1). 

ifi-.o/JP., 1475-1480. 



64 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

titulis exaltasses, ex eo precipue quod dixeris 
achillem ipsum suis viribus duos hectores pere- 
misse ipsum videlecet et troilum fortissimum 
fratrem ejus. Sane si te induxit grecorum 
affectio a quibus originem diceris produxisse 
vera non motus diceris ratione, sed potius ex 
furore. "1 

1 Historia, sig. 1 2 verso, col. 2. Benoit's only comment 
on Homer {R. de IT., 45-66 = Dares, De Excidio Troice, 
ed. Meister, 1, 13-17) is to the effect that his statements 
could not be true, as he lived one hundred years after 
the Trojan war, and that the Athenians 

" Dampner le voldrent par raison 
Por ce qu'ot fet les Damedeus 
Conbatre o les homes charneus " 

(R. de T,, 60-62 ; cf. Constans, Revue des Universites du 
Midi, vol. IV. pp. 36, 53), which Guido translated in its 
proper place. Historia, sig. a 1 recto, col. 1-2. It is of 
this passage that Broatch (I.e., p. 20) writes, " Thus in 
45 he sneers at the paganism of Homer," and of the clos- 
ing lines of the poem, — a mere scribal formula, — 

" Celui gart Dex et tienge et voie 
Qui bien essauce et monteploie " — 

(R. de T., 30107-30108 ed., " Qui bien s'avance et monte- 
ploie," but I have read as above on authority of MSS. 
B.N., 782, 1553 ; Arsenal, 3340, 3342) he remarks that the 
poet "expresses Christian sentiments." He emphasizes 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 55 

In the MonTces Tale the stanza in the 
account of Hercules 

" Was never wight, sith that the world bigan, 
That slow so many monstres as dide he. 
Thurgh-out this wyde world his name ran, 
What for his strengthe, and for his heigh 

bountee, 
And every reaume wente he for to see. 
He was so strong that no man mighte him 

lette; 
At bothe the worldes endes, seith Trophee, 
In stede of boundes, he a pilar sette."^ 

finds no analogue in the passage in Boethius 
in Chaucer s own translation,^ which was 
so closely followed in the two preceding 
stanzas/ but has its source in Guido's state- 

these passages as the only evidence to support his arbitrary 
statement that Chaucer could have found " his source in 
Benoit as well as in Guido " for his attack upon paganism 
{T. and C, V. 1849-1855). 

1 Canterbury Tales, B, 3301-3307. 

2 Boethius De Consolatione PhilosopMe, Book IV. Metre 
VII. 29-67. 

3 C. r., B, 3282-3300 



56 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

ment, much enlarged upon that of Benoit, 
which merely has 

" Et les honnes ilec ficha." ^ 

And Chaucer may have referred to this 
very statement, only in order to supplement 
it with the information he found in what 
he considered a better authority, in the 
work of Guido. 

" Hie est ille hereules de eujus ineredibilibus 
aetibus per multas mundi partes sermo dirigitur. 
Qui sua potentia infinitos gigantes suis tempo- 
ribus interemit . . . ista de eo sufficiant tetigisse 
cum et rei Veritas in tantum de sua victoria acta 
per mundum miraculose divulget, quod usque 
in hodiernum diem usque quam victor apparuit 
columne herculis testentur ad gades."^ 

1 R. de T., 795. 

^ Historia, sig. a 3 recto, col. 1 ; cf . R. de T., 791- 
794,797-798:- ..^j^^^^j^^ 

Cil qui sostint maint pesant fes, 
Et mainte grant merveille fist. 
Et maint felon jaiant ocit." 
" Ses granz merveilles et si fait 
Serront mes k toz jorz retrait." 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 57 

" Et locus ille in quo predicte columne Her- 
culis sunt affixe — a quo non sufficit ultra ire." ^ 

But Chaucer, in other poems where no 
authority is named, shows that he is well 
acquainted with Guido's work. In the 
Booh of the Duchesse he dreams that on 
the windows of his room 

" hooUy al the storie of Troye 
Was in the glasing y-wrought thus, 
Of Ector and king Priamus, 
Of Achilles and Lamedon, 
Of Medea and of Jason, 
Of Paris, Eleyne, and Lavyne."^ 

^ Historia, sig. a 3 recto, col. 2 ; cf . Skeat, Works of 
Chaucer, vol. II. p. Iv. Yet Broatch (I.e., 21) states that 
"the passage from the Monk's Tale ... is found in 
Benoit." Cf. R. de T., 796, " Ou Alexandres les [bonnes] 
trova," with Guido's " Ad has columnas magnas Macedo- 
nias Alexander . . . subjugando sibi mundum in manu 
legitur pervenisse," Historia, sig. a 3 recto, col. 1. Chau- 
cer's " both the worldes endes," as well as the statement 
in Guido, is based upon the geographical misconception 
so often found in mediaeval writers, which first confused, 
and finally made one, the Eastern " homes " of Bacchus 
or Alexander, and the Western limits set by Hercules or 
Arthur. 2 b. of B., 326-331. 



68 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

In Guide's work especially is a promi- 
nent place given to the loves of Medea 
and Jason/ as a part of the Trojan story, 
and from this source the English poet took 
the names in this passage, as, at a later 
period, in the Legend of Good Women, he 
utilized the narrative. 

Again, in the same poem, when we find : — 

" And therto al-so hardy be 
As was Ector, so have I joye, 
That Achilles slow at Troye — 
And therfor was he slayn also 
In a temple, for bothe two 

1 Cf . A. Joly, I.e., vol. I. p. 474; Bech, Anglia, vol. 
v. p. 331. While Guido always writes " Hector," the 
aphaeresized form, " Ector," appears in Benoit after qu' d\ 
etc. (R. de T., 296, 371; 283, 394, 420) ; but this was a 
common O.F. form which Chaucer could have found 
elsewhere. Cf. "Ercules," B. of D., 1058; and see p. 
56. "Priamus" is exceptional in Benoit (Conscans, I.e., 
p. 67); "Lamedon" has no precedent in "Laomedon" 
of both authors ; but for the manuscript reading, " king " 
before name which, it is true, may merely have been 
caught from I. 328, cf . " Li reis de Troi[e] Laomedon " 
(R. de T., 989) ; " Rex Laomedon," Historia, sig. a 4 
recto, col. 1. But the form " Laumedon," found both in 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 59 

Were slayn, he and Antylegyus, 
And so seyth Dares Frigius, 
For love of [hir] Polixena."^ 

It is evidently a summing-up of the story 
of the passion of Achilles for Polyxena, 
such as it appeared, in an extended form, 
in the Historia of Guido.^ That Dares was 
not the immediate source, as stated by 
Chaucer, is conclusively demonstrated by 
his forced spelling of the name " Anti- 
logus," which Guido had taken as he 
found it in Benoit,^ who had thus distorted 

Benoit (Constans, I.e., pp. 34-35, where synseresis must 
be allowed on account of the metre) and in Guido, would 
give Chaucer's spelling of the name as "Laodamia," 
" Laudomia," which became " Ladomea." Cf . L. of G. 
W., 924; C. T., B, 71; F, 1445; cf. T. and C, IV. 124, 
" Lameadoun." "With " Lavyne " cf . R. de la Rose, ed. 
Michel, 21818, " Helaine ne Lavine," but 14169, " Helaine," 
"Medee,"Z.c., 14170, 15349. 

^ B. of D., 1064-1071. On spelling "Antilogus," 
Skeat, Minor Poems of Chaucer, 2d ed. p. 491. 

2 Historia, sig. k 2 verso, col. 1, — 14 recto, col. 1 ; cf . 
R. de T., 17457-18354, 19177-19289, 19395-19779, 20679- 
20848, 21176-21256, 21799-22256. 

3 R. de T., 585, 20969, 22091 ; Historia, sig. 1 3 verso, 
col. 2, — 14 recto, col. 1. 



60 CHAUCER'S INDEBTED:N^ESS 

the ^^ Antilochus " of Dares. ^ And that it 
was to Guido'Sj and not to Benoit's, work 

1 Dares, 41, 8 ; 11, 13. Skeat's statement (Minor 
Poems, p. 266), " Antilochus is a mistake for Archilochus, 
owing to the usual mediaeval confusion of proper names," 
is not based on a single fact. Archilochus, who, in the 
Iliad (XL 100, XIV. 164), is the son of Antenor, in 
Dares (23, 4) is a Thracian ally of the Trojans ; in 
Benoit (R. de T., 6854, 7692) Archilogus is the son of 
" Theseus de Theresche," and again appears in the same 
r61e in the Historia (sig. f 6 recto, col. 1; g 3 recto, 
col. 1) as " Artilogus " and " Archileus." But Guido, 
misunderstanding a passage in Benoit {R. de T., 8360- 
8361, where " Antilogus " appears as the son of Theseus), 
makes an " Artilogus " the son of another Theseus (His- 
toria, g 5 recto, col. 2 ; cf . wrong translation again in the 
Gest Hystoriale, ed. Paton and Donaldson, 6448-6450), 
who in both writers appears as a Greek ally (R. de T., 
8179-8184, 8873-8902, 9045-9062, 11174; Historia, sig. 
g 4 verso, col. 1 ; g 6 verso, col. 1 ; h 1 recto, col. 1). A 
certain " Artilegus " is introduced by Guido — in a pas- 
sage in which two episodes are made from one in Benoit 
— as a doublet of " Archelaus," who is slain by Hector 
(Historia, sig. h 5 recto, col. 2 ; cf. R. de T., 10817 ff.). In 
Lydgate's Troy-hook (sig. X 2 verso, col. 2, but X 3 recto, 
col. 2 ; verso, cols. 1-2, the correct form " Anthylogus " 
appears), in the Gest Hystoriale (10555-10556), and the 
La destruction de Troye of Milet (3987), Archilogus is the 
son of Nestor ; cf . Works of Chaucer, vol. VI. p. 401. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 61 

that Chaucer was directly indebted, is 
shown by the name of the author, " Dares 
Frigius," such as it appeared in the for- 
mer ', ^ while " Dahes/' " Daire/' " Dares " ^ 
is a less specific nomenclature, found in 
the Old French poem. 
Then in the lines, — 

" nay, certes, than were I wel 
Wers than was Achitofel, 
Or Anthenor, so have I joye, 
The traytour that betraysed Troye, " ^ 

I is at once the mediaeval tradition and spell- 
\ ing of Antenor, such as we find in Guido,* 
and when Chaucer writes, — 

1 Historia, sig. e 1 verso, col. 1 ; e 3 recto, col. 1 ; f 5 
verso, col. 1 ; cf . p. 70 n. 

2 R. de T., 2048, 2051, 3107, 12292, 14048, 16210, 21395, 
21173 ; 106, 5183, 9957, 23722 ; Constans, I.e., p. 68. On 
Chaucer's acquaintance with the work of Dares, when 
writing the L. of G. W., Bech, Anglia, vol. V. pp. 325- 
326. 3 B. of D., 1117-1120. 

* Historia, sig. m 1 recto, col. 1 ff. ; cf. R. de T., 
24373-26325. There is no hint anywhere in Chaucer's 
works to show that he accepted the mediaeval conception 



62 CHAUCER'S mDEBTEDNESS 

" Alias that day 
The sorwe I suffred, and the wo ! 
That trewlwy Cassandra, that so 
Bewayled the destruccioun 
Of Troye and of Ilioun, 
Had never swich sorwe as I tho," ^ 

he follows Guido in making a distinction 
between Troy and Ilium,^ and, as he, gives 
Cassandra, who is only incidentally men- 

of ^neas as a traitor in conjunction with Antenor, in 
contradiction to the narrative of Virgil (cf . H. of F., 
162 ff. ; L. of G. W., 930 ff.), unless it be in the line in 
the Troilus (II. 1474) in which the two are named 
together as friends of the enemy of Criseyde, " Were 
it for Antenor and Eneas," a juxtaposition of names to 
be found in Benoit (299 ; 24373). Nor is the story that 
Simon entered Troy concealed in the wooden horse, — in 
Guido one of brass, "equum erum" — found in his 
mediaeval authorities (R. de T., 25618-25639, 25760- 
25923; Historia, sig. m 4 verso, col. 2 — m 5 recto, col. 
1), accepted to the rejection of the Virgilian authority. 
(H. of F., 151-155; Z. of G. W., 930-933; C. T., B, 
4418-4419 ; F, 209-211, 305-307) ; cf . Works of Chaucer, V. 
p. 377. 

1 B. of D., 1243-1249. 

2 Historia, sig. c 2 verso, col. 1-2, in the section treat- 
ing of the building of Troy by Priam, we find : — 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 63 

tioned in the narrative of the ^neid,^ a 
prominent position in the Trojan story .^ 

Ilion formari constituit quod magnum ejus palacium 
appelatur. 

Again in the section De direptione Troie we find after 
entering the city that 

Greci ... in magnum ilion irruerunt 

(sig. m 6 recto, col. 1). The same distinction is made 
in the H. of F., 152, 155, 158; and in the L. of G. W., 
936-937,— 

" In al the noble tour of Ilioun 
That of the citee was the cheef dungeoun," 
not only the distinction, but the language, is taken from 
Benoit, R. de T., 3029-3030 (cf. 645-646, 10366, 24316- 
24317, 25275, 26029, 26119). 

" A une part font Ylion 
De Troie le mestre danjon," 

Broatch, I.e. p. 22; cf. Fromman, Germania, vol. II. p. 
77; C. r., B, 288-289, 4546. 

1 ^n., 11. 246, 403; III. 187; V. 636. 

2 Historia, sig. C 1 verso, col. 1 = R. de T., 2941- 
2942 = Dares, 6, 4 ; Historia, sig. e 2 recto, col. 2 = 
R. de T., 4127-4144 =^ Dares, 11, 2-5 ; Historia, sig. o 
6 recto, col. 2 = R. de T., 4861-4916 = Dares, 13, 14-16 ; 
Historia, sig. e 3 recto, col. 1 = R. de T., 5509-5520 = 
Dares, 15, 17-18 ; Historia, sig. h 3 verso, col. 1 = R. 
de T., 10355-10390 ; Historia, sig. m 4 verso, col. 2 = R. 
de r., 25482-25488 ; Historia, sig. m 5 verso, col. 2 = 



64 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

In the list of lovers in the Parlement of 
Foules, — 

" Tristram, Isoude, Paris, and Achilles, 
Eleyne, Cleopatre, and Troilus," ^ 

the heroes of the two romantic episodes of 
the Historia are alluded to ; in the line 
of the Legend of Good Women, — 

" And Polixene, that boghten love so dere," 2 

R. de T., 26009-26019 = Dares, 49, 21-50, 17 ; Historia, 
sig. m 6 recto, col. 1 = R. de T., 26107-26112. In these 
passages her seer's powers are mentioned, and her pro- 
phetic lamentations are set forth in full. 

1 P. of F., 290-291. J. Koch (Englischen Studien, 
vol. I. pp. 284-285) thinks that these lines, in which 
Troilus is taken as a type of a lover, could only have 
been written after Chaucer had become acquainted with 
the Filostrato, as his story only forms a minor episode 
in the works of Benoit and Guido. But he leaves un- 
explained the introduction of Achilles, whose name, how- 
ever, as that of Cleopatra, Paris, and Tristram, the 
English poet may have taken from a passage in the 
Divina Commedia of Dante (Inf., V. 63-67), of which 
the P. of F. shows the earliest influence. Cf. Inf., 11. 
1-3, 83-84, 10-11, 19-20; Purg., XXVIII., 16-18, 7-9, 
with P. of P., 85-86, 109-112, 123-124, 141, 169-170, 
201-203. 2 X. 0/ G. W., B, 258. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 65 

there is again a reference to one of these ; 
in the Nonne Frees tes Tale one of the " en- 
samples/' to illustrate the value of dreams 
cited by Chauntecleer, — 

" Lo heer Andromacha, Ectores wyf , 
That day that Ector sholde lese his lyf, 
She dremed on the same night biforn, 
How that the lyf of Ector sholde be lorn, 
If thilke day he wente in-to bataille ; 
She warned him, but it mighte nat availle ; 
He wente for to fighte nathelees, 
But he was slayn anoon of Achilles, 
But thilke tale is al to long to telle, 
A And eek it is ny day, I may nat dwelle," ^ 

jwhich has no classical authority, can be 
[ found in the narrative of Guido. So far as 
the evidence of the names in the first pas- 
sage goes, Chaucer may have already become 
acquainted with the work of Benoit; he 
makes use of the old French poem, as well 
as of the Latin romance, elsewhere in the 

1 C. T., B., 4331-4340. 



66 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

Legend of Good Women^ and in either of 

these works he could have read the story 

of the fate of Polyxena, who was slain at 

the tomb of Achilles by Pyrrhus, because 

for her — 

"sis peres fu ocis."^ 

Again, in the summary of the dream of 
Andromache and its fulfilment there is no 
hint in its details or language upon which 
it can be stated conclusively whether it was 
to the narrative of Benoit or to that of 
Guidoj Chaucer was indebted.^ 

1 Cf . p. 52, n. 2 ; p. 62, n. 2. 

^R.de r., 26297; cf. 663-668, 26369-26432; Historia, 
sig. m 6 verso, col. 1 — n 1, recto, col. 1. For phrase, 
" boghten love so dere," cf . T. and C, I., 810 : " Many a 
man hath love ful dere y-bought," which has no equiva- 
lent in the parallel passage of the R. de la R., 21878; 
but T. and C, V. 1755-1756 ; " His ire ... the Grekes ay 
boughte," v. 1800-1801 ; " The wraththe ... of Troilus 
the Grekes boughten dere," finds its counterpart in 
Benoit's " Chier lo comparent Troien " (23688) ; " Cil de 
Ik Font chier comparee " (21204) ; " Mes trop les a, chier 
compare" (20122). Cf. 17944, 668, 13290. 

3 R. de T., 15187 ff. ; cf . 390-412 ; Historia, sig. i 4 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 67 

Li taking the Filostrato as a basis for 
his Troihis, Chaucer, knowing both of the 
works from which Boccaccio drew the rudi- 
ments of his story/ did not hesitate to adopt 

verso, col. 2 ff., where name as elsewhere in the same 
work is spelled Andrometa. Tyrwhitt had stated (I.e., 
p. 204, note to 1. 15147), " The first author who relates it 
is the fictitious Dares, cxxiv, and Chaucer very probably 
took it from him, or from Guido de Columnis, or per- 
haps from Benoit de Sainte More." Cf. Broatch (I.e., 
p. 22), "Tyrwhitt affirmed that the dream of An- 
dromache . . . came from Guido. It might as well 
have come from Benoit." 

^ Le Clerc was of the opinion that " le Filostrato n'est 
qu'un developpement de I'episode de Troilus et Briseida 
ou Criseida dans le poeme francaise de la Guerre de 
Troie par Benoit de Sainte-More " (Hist. lift, de la France, 
vol. XXIY. pp. 553-554). Hortis (Studi sulle opere latine 
del Boccaccio, 1879, p. 118), Sandras (I.e., p. 42), Moland 
and d'Hericault (I.e., p. xciii), and Barth (Guido de 
Columna, Leipzig, 1877, p. 34) do not try to decide 
whether it was to Benoit or Guido that Boccaccio was 
indebted for the story of the Troilus. G. Koerting 
(Boccaccios Lehen und Werke, 1880, p. 590) and V. 
Cresini (Contributo agli studi sul Boccaccio, 1887, p. 195) 
widen the question by the suggestion that it may 
have been taken from an Italian translation of either 
Benoit or Guido, instead of from the original of either 



68 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

hints from those authors which had been 
neglected by Boccaccio. Not only did he 
dovetail into his own narrative details of 
the Latin and French versions of the 
Troilus episode which had been omitted 
or changed by the Italian writer, but also 
followed " myn auctor " in seeking material 
in other episodes, and weaving romances 
about names found in their common au- 
thorities. And in such additions from 
Benoit and Guido the predominance of the 
former as an authority is evident both in 

(cf . C. H. A. Wager, The Seege of Troye, p. xxii.) . Dunger 
(I.e., p. 36), Hertzberg (I.e., p. 200), Bartoli (Iprecursori del 
Boccaccio, 1876, pp. 64-66 ; cf . 70-80), M. Landau (Giovanni 
Boccaccio; seine Leben und seine Werke, 1877, pp. 90-91), 
and Gorra (Testi inediti di storia troiana, etc., 1889, p. 
339 ff.) believed that Guide's original text was the direct 
source ; while Joly (I.e., vol. I. p. 504), Gaspary (Gesch. der 
italienischen Lit., vol. II. p. 638), Morf (Rom., vol. XXI. 
p. 106), and Savj-Lopez (Rom, vol. XXVII. pp. 445-449) 
attributed the greater influence to Benoit, although ac- 
knowledging the supplementary use of Guido ; and Savez- 
Lopez was the first (I.e., pp. 451-453) to note Boccaccio's 
indebtedness to the love episode of Achilles in Benoit. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOXXE 69 

language and sentiment, while he accepts 
the statements of the latter for specific 
details, the correctness of which he thinks 
can be vouched for. While Benoit always 
writes for Dictys, "Dithis"^ or "Ditis,"^ 
Guido in translating the passage in the 
French poem which tells of the discovery 
by Cornelius^ the " neveu " of '' Saluistes," ^ 

of — 

" L'estoire que Daire ot escrite 
Et en langue gregoise dite," ^ 

regarded the participle '^ dite " as a proper 
name, and, here and elsewhere, always 

1 R. de T., 637, 24301, 26202, 30095. 

2 R. de T., 24299, 24322, 26040 ; Constans, I.e., p. 64. 

3 R. de T., 77-79. 

" Cist Saluistes, 90 truis lisant 

Ot un neveu f orment sachant 

Cornelius fu apelez," 
is Benoit's interpretation of the words in the formula of 
address, " Cornelius Xepos Sallustio," in Dares. Cf . Joly, 
I.e., vol. I. p. 477. 

4 R. de T., 87-88, ed. " En greque langue fete et dite," 
which I have rejected in favor of the reading in Vienna 
2571, ap. G. K. Fromman, Germania, vol. II. p. 62. 



70 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

referred to this author, with whose work 
he was unacquainted, as Dites/ so, Chaucer, 
whose ignorance on this point was one with 
Guido, names " Dyte " as a writer on the 
Trojan war, and when he gives the advice, 

" But the Troiane gestes, as they f elle, 

In Omer, or in Dares, or in Dyte, 

Who-so that can, may rede hem as they wryte,"^ 

he is speaking in all seriousness to those 
who were better situated than he. That 
he came to doubt the authority that he 
accepted when writing the Troilus is 
shown in the later poem. The Hous of 

^ Hisioria, sig. a 1 recto, col. 2. 

" Eaque per ditem grecum et frigius Daretem ... in 
presentem libellum per me judicem Guidonem de columnis 
messana transsumpta legentur, prout in duobus libris 
eorum inscriptum, quasi una vocis consonantis inventum 
est athenis. Quamquam autem hos libellos . . . Cornelius 
nomine Salustii magni nepos in latinam transferre 
curverit." 

This mistake of Guido was first noted by Hertzberg, 
I.e., 189-190. Cf. sig. o. 7 recto, col. 1, " ditem grecum." 
On passage in epilogue, Historia, sig. O 6 recto, col. 2, in 
•which the form " ditis " occurs — which may be only a 
gloss, cf. H. Morf (Rom, vol. XXI. pp. 20-21). 

2 r. and C, I. 145-147. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOXNE 71 

Fame, where, again in a list of writers on 

Troy, he names 

" the great Omere, 

And with him Dares and Tytus." ^ 

This is no mere spelling of a name, but the 
statement of a correction to which the poet 
had given thought. In his readings he had 
not come across the work of ^'Ditis — 
Dithis — Dites," and to attribute such a work 
to a well-known historian, " Tytus Livius,"^ 
one of whose names could easily have been 
corrupted, seemed the sensible way. 

Chaucer was so well acquainted with the 
story of Achilles and Polyxena^ that he 

IS". o/F., 1466-1467. 

2 B. of the D., 1084 = ^. de la R., 9365 ; L. of G. W., 
A, 280. 1873, (Titus) 1683 ; C. T., C, 1. In the B. of the 
D. the allusion to Lucretia is only at second hand, in the 
L. of G. W. the Latin history was used as a source, while 
again in the Frankeleyns Tale, where no authority is 
named, the name occurs in the list of virtuous women, 
translation from the monastic tract Contra Jovinianum. 
Cf. C. T., F, 1405-1409 ; Migne, Patrologia, vol. XXin. 
col. 275. 3 Cf . p. 59. 



72 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

recognized the use made of it by Boccaccio 
in telling of the beginning of the love 
adventures of Troilus, and enlarged his own 
narrative by hints drawn from both of the 
sources of the Italian poet. 
Boccaccio's lines, — 

"il quale [i.e. Troilus] amore trafisse 
Piu ch'alcun altro,"i 

could hardly have been the original of 
Chaucer's longer and more specific state- 
ment, — 

" the god of love gan loken rowe 
Right for despyt, and shoop for to ben wroken; 
He kidde anoon his bo we nas not broken; 
For sodeynly he hit him at the fuUe; " ^ 

while the figure employed seems to suggest 
the use of a passage in Guido's description 
of the first meeting of Achilles and Polyx- 
ena: — 

"Et dum desirabili animo in earn Achilles 
suum infixisset intuitum sagitta cupidimis for- 

1 Fil, I. 25, 7-8. 2 T. and C, I. 206-209. 



TO GUIDO BELLE COLOXXE 73 

tern Acliillem subito viilneravit et ad interiora 
pertransiens cordis ejus.*'^ 

Again, Chaucer's lines, 

" And sodeynly he wex ther-with astoned, 
And gan hire bet biholde in thrifty wyse: 
' O mercy, god ! ' thoughte he, ' wher hastow 

woned, 
Thou art so fair and goodly to devyse ? '" 2 

" And after that hir loking gan she light e. 
That never thoughte him seen so good a sighte. 

And of hir look in him ther gan to quiken 

So greet desir, and swich affeccioun, 

That in his hertes botme gan to stiken 

Of hir his fixe and depe impressioun : 

And though he erst hadde poured up and doun, 

He was tho glad his homes in to shrinke; 

Unnethes wiste he how to loke or winke,"^ 

which have no parallel in the Filostrato, are 
a clever piecing together of unconnected 

1 Historia, sig. k 2 verso, col. 2. Cf. E. Meybrinck, 
Die Auffassung der Antike bei Jacques Milet, Guido de 
Columna und Benoit de SaAnt-Maur, Marburg, 1886, p. 46. 

2 T. and C, I. 274-278. 

3 T. and C, I. 293-301. 



74 CHAUCEK'S INDEBTEDNESS 

expressions in the Latin Komance in the 
same episode : — 

"Achilles igitur dum Polixenam inspexit et 
ejus pulchritudinem contemplatus vere suo con- 
cepit in animo nunquam se vidisse puellam nee 
aliquam mulierem tante pulchritudinis forma 
vigere. . . . Qui dum in eam frequentius in- 
tuendo sibi ipsi placere putaret et lenire grave 
desiderium cordis sui majoris scissure cordis 
vulneris seipsum sibi reddebat actor em. . . . 
Quid ultra Amore Polixene nimium, illaqueatus, 
Achilles nescit ipse quid faciat. . . . Propter 
quod dilatat amplius plagas suas et sui amoris 
vulnera magis sui cordis attrahit in profun- 
dum."i 

^ Historia, sig. k 2 verso, col. 2, — k 3 recto, col. 1 ; cf . 
Gower, Conf. Amant. V. 7591 fE. The lines, 
[Calchas] 

" Knew wel that Troye sholde destroyed be, 
By answere of his god, that highte thus, 
Daun Phebus or Apollo Delphicus, 

(T. and C, I. 68-70) 
Thus shal I seyn, and that his coward herte 
Made him amis the goddes text to glose. 
When he for ferde out of his Delphos sterte," 

(T. mid C, IV. 1409-1411) 
in which there is an allusion to the journey of Calchas to 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOXXE 75 

Boccaccio did not give a description of 

Troilus, and Chaucer, in combining details 

from Benoit and Guido, takes his more 

definite information from the latter. Thus^ 

when Pandarus refers to 

" Troilus 
The wyse worthy Ector the secounde," ^ 

the Delphic oracle in the interests of the Trojans, the 
warning of the god, which he obeyed, in accompanying 
Achilles to Athens, — not a suggestion of which appears 
in the Filostrato, — do not furnish any hint as to whether 
it was to the French or the Latin work (cf . it. de T., 5809- 
5918; Historia, sig. e 6 recto, col. 1) Chaucer had resort to 
at this point in the story. However, it may be noted that 
Phebus with the French epithet does not appear in the 
R. de T. (cf. Danz Apollin, 13732) nor does the Latin 
"Delphicus" appear in Guido ("Apollo," Historia, sig. e 
5 verso, col. 2). Lydgate accepts the authority of Chau- 
cer, and in his translation of this passage we find " Apollo 
Delphicus" (Troy-hook, sig. 2 recto, col. 2). Guido con- 
fused Delos and "Delphos insulam" (Historia, sig. e 
4 recto, col. 2; e 5 verso, col. 2). Benoit has Defeis (R. 
de T., 205, 5786). Chaucer may have written Delphos on 
the authority of Dares (19, 13 and 19). Cf. C. T., F, 1077, 
" Thy temple in Delphos wol I barefoot seke." The 
account of Calchas in the Filostrato (I. 8-9) corresponds 
to the more general statement of Guido in another passage 
(Historia, sig. i 1 recto, col. 2; cf. R. de T., 12952 ff.). 
1 r. and C, n. 157-158. 



76 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

or wlien the poet speaking in his own 
person says, — 

" And certainly in storie it is y-f ounde, 
That Troilus was never un-to no wight, 
As in his tyme, in no degree secounde 
In durring don that longeth to a knight. 
Al mighte a geaunt passen him of might, 
His herte ay with the firste and with the beste 
Stod paregal, to durre don that him leste," ^ 

I we have two separate passages based upon 
the statement in the Historia : — 

" In viribus vero et strenuitate bellandi vel 
fuit alius Hector vel secundus ab ipso. In toto 
etiam regno Troie juvenis nullus fuit tantis 
viribus nee tanta audacia gloriosus."^ 

1 T. and C, V. 834-840. Cf. 11. 643, 739-740; HI. 
1774-1775 ; V. 1564-1565, 1803-1804. 

2 Historia, sig. e 2 verso, col. 1 ; cf . sig. k 6 recto, 
col. 2, 

"alius hector qui non minori predictus est virtute inclitus 
ille scilicet troilus qui non minus quam si hector viveret, 
grecos afficit " 

= R. de T. (19890-19905; cf. 3973-3976, 5419-5421) 
which again has its source in Dares (36, 20-22), " Dio- 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 77 

In describing the sorrowful plight in 
which Pandarus found Criseyde, Chaucer 
availed himself of all that the Filostrato 
offered, — 

"El vide lei in sul letto avviluppata 
Ne' singhiozzi, nel pianto et ne' sospiri ; 
E'l petto tutto et la faccia bagnata 
Di lacrime le vide, ed in disiri 
Di pianger gli occhi suoi, e scapigliata, 
Dar vero segno degh aspri martiri," ^ 

medes et Ulixes dicere coeperunt Troilum non minus 
quam Hectorem virum fortissimum esse." Cf. Skeat, 
I.e., p. Ivi. ; Broatch, I.e., p. 16. Skeat, I.e., pp. Ivi.-lvii., 
compares T. and C, I. 1072-1085, with Guide's descrip- 
tion of Troilus, while Broatch (I.e., p. 16), noting that 
these lines refer especially to the change that took place 
in Troilus in consequence of his love, says that any 
details in this passage "might equally well have been 
taken from Benoit, 5372 ff." But in fact Chaucer merely 
anticipates the situation that he translates from the Filo- 
strato in a later passage. Cf . T. and C, III. 1716-1729 ; 
Fil., ni. 72 ; T. and C, HI. 1772-1778, 1786-1792 ; Fil, 
ni. 90, 92. 

1 Fil, IV. 96. 1-6. Cf . IV. 100, 7-8 : — 

" E intorno agli occhi un purpurino giro 
' Dava vero segnal del suo martiro," 



78 CHAUCEK'S INDEBTEDNESS 

and by making his own a further detail in 
Guide's description of the heroine's actions, 
not put to use by Boccaccio, 

" et aureos crines suos a lege ligaminis absolutos 
divellit,"! 

introduced additional matter in his ver- 
sion, — 

" And fond that she hir-selven gan to trete 
Ful pitously ; for with hir salte teres 
Hir brest, hir face y-bathed was ful wete ; 

with T. and C, IV. 869-870, — 

" About her eyen two a purple ring 
Bi-trent in sothfast tokninge of hir peyne." 

The ultimate source is Dante (Vita Nuova, ch. xl.), 

"Dintorno loro (i.e. gli occhi) si facea un colore purpu- 

reo, lo quale suole apparir per alcuno martirio ch' altri 

riceva," 

" Ch' Amore 

Li cerchia di corona di martiri." 

On indebtedness of the Filostrato to the Vita Nuova, cf. 
Savj-Lopez in Rom, XXVII. pp. 443-444. 

1 Historia, sig. i 2 recto, col. 2. " Aureos crines suos 
. . . divellit" = FiL, IV. 87, 7 = T. and C, IV. 736-737; 
"ounded hair," cf. R. de la R., 22131-22132; H. of K, 
1386. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 79 

The mighty tresses of hir sonnish heres, 
Unbroyden, hangen al aboute hir eres ; 
Which yaf him verray signal of mar tyre 
Of deeth, which that hir herte gan desyre," ^ 

and it was the same phrase in Guide's 
work that may have suggested to Chaucer, 
in his description of Criseyde, the lines, — 

" And ofte tyme this was hir manere, 
To gon y-tressed with hir heres clere 
Doun by hir coler at hir bak bihinde, 
Which with a threde of gold she wolde binde."^ 

1 T. and C, IV. 813-819; I. 819 "her herte," mr. "for 
wo she." 

2 T. and C, V. 809-812. A point suggested by Skeat 
(I.e., p. Ivii.), although " this seems fantastic " to Broatch 
(I.e., pp. 17-18) . The hint for this detail in the description 
of Criseyde may be due to Guido, but the lines are only 
a modification of a passage in the P. of F., 267-268 : — 

" Her gilte heres with a golden threde 
Ybounded were, untressed as she lay," 

a free translation of the Italian original (Tesaide, VII. 
65, 1-2),— 

" Ella avea d' oro i crini, et relegati 
Intorno al capo senza trecci alcuna.'^ 



80 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

But on the other hand, when he writes, — 

" And eek her fingres longe and smale 
She wrong ful ofte." 

" Hir hewe, whylom bright, that tho was pale," ^ 

there is only a reminiscence of Guido's 
stronger language : — 

" Unguibus etiam suis sua tenerrima ora dila- 
cerabat . . . et dum rigidis unguibus suas max- 
illas exarat rubeo cruore, pertinctas, lacerata 
lilia lacerata rosis immisceri similitudinarie 
videbantur."2 

A phrase of Guido's that suggested to 
Chaucer in his version an addition to Boc- 
caccio's description of the heroine has 
already been noticed, and further, a com- 

1 T. and a, IV. 737-738, 740. Cf . T. and C, V. 708, 

" Full pale y-waxen was hir brighte face " 

= FiL, VI. 1, 6-7, 

" le f resche guance et delicate 
Pallide e magre I'eran divenute." 

2 Historia, sig. i 2, recto, col. 2 ; cf . I.e., cols. 1-2, " si 
promentis aliens [vestes] manibus strigerentur et aqua- 
rum multitudinem effunderent." 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOXXE 81 

parison of the analogous passages of the 
three authors shows that the English poet 
deferred to the authority of Guido when 
in conflict mth that of Boccaccio — in this 
instance for artistic reasons if for no other 
cause. Thus, while Boccaccio tells us of 
his Griseida^ that — 

" Ell' era grande, ed alia sua grandezza 
Rispondean bene i membri tutti quanti," ^ 

Chaucer writes, — 

" Criseyde mene was of hir stature," 

in this as in his other lines, — 

" Thereto of shap, of face, and eek of chere 
There mighte been no fairer creature," ^ 

"And, save her browes joyneden y-fere, 
Ther nas no lak, in ought I can espyen," ^ 

1 Fil., I. 27, 1-2, used by Chaucer in his description of 
Troilus {T. and C, Y. 827-828), which is similar to that 
given in R. de T., 5405-5406, for which there is no equiv- 
alent in the Historia (sig. e 2 verso, col. 1). Cf. Skeat., 
I.C., pp. Ivi., lix. ; Broatch, I.e., pp. 16, 18, 26. 

2 T. and C, V. 806-808. 3 7^. and C, V. 813-814. 



82 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

following the passage in Guido : — 

" Breseida autem filia Calcas multa fuit spe- 
ciositate decora nee longa nee brevis nee nimium 
macilenta, laeteo profusa eandore, genis roseis, 
flavis erinibus. Sed supereiliis junctis, quorum 
junetura dum multa piloxitate tumesceret modi- 
cam ineonvenientam presentabat." ^ 

^ Historia, sig. e 2 recto, col. 1; cf. Dares, 17, 7-9, 
"Briseidam formosam non alta statura . . . supereiliis 
junctis," and R. de T., 5258, 5261-5262 : — 
" N'ert trop petite ne trop granz." 
" Mes le sorcil qui li giseient 
Auquetes li mesaveneient." 
A single word in the first line suggests Dares as the 
source, but his statement as to Criseyde's height is not 
as definite as that of Benoit and Guido ; and only in the 
Historia is the defect of the eyebrows emphasized. On 
the other hand, it is to be noted that in Chaucer's story, 
as in Boccaccio's, the heroine appears as a widow (Fil., 
I. 11, 3 = r. and C, I. 97; cf. FiL, I. 19, 2, with T, and 
C, I. 170; FiL, II. 69, 2; T. and C, II. 750 ff . ; FiL, 
VI. 29, 1-3; T. and C, V. 875-876), and although Chau- 
cer states (T. and C, I. 132-133) : — 

" But whether that she children hadde or noon, 
I rede it nought, therefore I lete it goon," 
Boccaccio specifically states that she did not have any 
{FiL, I. 15, 4-7; 11. 69, 3; cf. W. S. McCormick, 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 83 

For the expansion of the story of the 
wooing of Diomedes^ Chaucer drew largely 
from the French poem, but in the answer 
of Criseyde, for the lines, — 

" I sey not therefore that I wol yow love, 
Ne I sey not nay, but in conclusioun 
I mene wel, by god that sit above," ^ 

no specific analogous passage is found there, 
while in the Latin romance we find the 
passages of the same import, in which the 

Globe Chaucer, p. 440) ; while Benoit (JR. de T., 12977) 
refers to her as "la pucele." There is no hint of her 
condition in either Guido or Dares ; cf . Hertzberg, Z.c, 
pp. 197-198. 

With T. and C, Y. 815-817: — 

" But for to speken of hir eyen clere, 
Lo trewely, they writen that hir syen 
That Paradys stood formed in hir yen," 
cf. Dares, 17, 9, "oculis venustis"; R, de T., 5263, 
" Biax ielz avoit de grant maniere " (cf. p. 124, n. 1) ; His- 
toria, sig. e 2 recto, col. 2, " oculis venusta " (cf . Hertz- 
berg, I.e., p. 180, n.) ; FiL, I. 28, 8, " Gli occhi lucenti e 
I'angelico viso"; T. and C, V. 820-825 = Fil, I. 11, 7; 
R. de T., 5264-5270. 

1 T. and C, V. 1002-1004. 



84 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

thought and language is similar to what 
we find in the Troilus : — 

"Amoris tui oblationes ad presens nee re- 
pudio nee admitto." ^ 

" Unde sua calliditate se nolle non negat et 
velle in expectationis fiduciam conatur ponere 
Diomedem. " 2 

But it was in Benoit's work alone that 
Chaucer found mention of the tokens of 
love that Criseyde presented to Diomedes, 
circumstances omitted by Guido, and so 

1 Historia, sig. 12 verso, col. 1. 

^ Historia, sig. i 4 verso, col. 2. Skeat (Z.c, p. Ix.) 
citing from MS., Mm. 5. 14, in Cambridge University Li- 
brary, quotes the much closer analogue, " Unde Diomedi 
suum non negat, etiam nee promittit," but here as else- 
where I prefer the text, otherwise fuller and more correct, 
given in the incunabula. The lines in Benoit (15588- 
15589,13641),— 

*' N'est biau ne bien, reson ne dreiz 
Que d'amer vos donge parole," 

" Gie ne vos refuse autrement," 
do not seem to support Broatch's statement (I.e., p. 18), 
" There is nothing here which might not have come from 
Benoit." 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 85 

changed in detail by Boccaccio, who had 
adopted this hint from this episode upon 
which to base an incident in his story, as to 
be hardly recognizable/ and the soliloquy of 
the heroine before she finally gives herself 
up to her Grecian lover/ omitted by Boc- 
caccio, and very shortly summarized by 
Guido. And yet here in one line, — 

" Retorning in hir soule ay up and doun," ^ 
Chaucer adopts a phrase of Guido' s, — 
" in sua mente revolvit," * 

1 Cf . p. ^Rde T., 20194-20330. 

3 T. and C, V. 1023. 

. * Historia, sig. 1 recto, col. 1, but cf . T. and C, U. 
601-602 : — 

" And every word gan up and doun to winde,'* 
which translates the Italian, (Fil. U. 68, 3-4) : — 
" Seco nel cuor ciascuna paroletta 
Rivolendo di Pandaro," 
which is rendered again in T. and C, U. 659 : — 
" And gan to caste and rollen up and doun," 
whUe T. and C, HI. 1541-1542 : — 

" And in his thought gan up and doun to winde 
Hir wordes alle," 



86 ^ CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

and, for brevity's sake, gives the gist of 
Guido's account of tlie subsequent action 
of the heroine, which is only implied in 
the passage of the Roman de Troie. In 
Guido's statement, — 

" Totum suum animum in Diomedem declinat 
et convertit amorem. Sed quam primum con- 
valescentia adeptus absolute facere velle suum, 
cum in ejus amore tota defer veat et flagranti 
desiderio penitus incalescat," ^ 

Chaucer found authority for his lines : — 

" And for to hele him of his sorwes smerte 
Men seyn, I not, that she yaf him her herte."^ 

renders Fil, III. 54, 1-2 : — 

" E giva ciascun atto rivolgendo 
Nel suo pensuiero." 

1 Historia, sig. 1 1 recto, col. 1 ; cf . E. de T., 20218- 
20220 : — 

" Desor puet Ten aperceveir 
Que vers lui a tot atorne 
S'amor, son cuer et son pense." 

2 T. and C, Y. 1049-1050. Broatch, Ic, p. 25, cites a 
line of the heroine's speech (R. de T., 20271), " Trop ai 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOX^^E 87 

A careful investigation of Guido's work, 
in conjunction with the other two sources, 
puts beyond doubt the truthfuhiess of the 
poet's statement when he writes, — 

" But trewely, how longe it was betwene, 
That she f or-sook him for this Diomede 
Ther is non auctor telleth it, I wene, 
Take every man now to his bokes hede ; 
He shall no terme finden out of drede."^ 

But when he finds the exact number of 
days stated upon another matter, he is not 
so careful to follow his authorities. For 
when he writes, — 

" For which, with-outen any wordes mo, 
To Troye I wol, as for conclusionn. 
But god it wot, er fully monthes two, 
She was ful fer fro that entencioun, 
For both Troilus and Troye town, 

en lui ja mon cuer mie," which has at least one word which 
is in the English lines. 

1 T. and C, y. 1086-1090. 



88 CHAUCER'S INDEBTED:CTESS 

Shall knotteles through-out hir herte slyde ; ^ 
For she wol take a purpos for t'abyde,"^ 

he flatly contradicts Guide's more radical 
statement : — 

" Non dum ilia dies [i.e. the day of her arrival 
in the Greek camp] ad horam declinaverat ves- 
pertinam cum Briseida suas recentes mutaverat 
voluntates et Vetera proposita sui cordis, et jam 
magis sibi succedit ad votum esse cum Grecis 
quam fuisse hactenus cum Trojanis. Jam 
nobilis Troili amor cepit in sua mente tepescere 
et tam brevi hora repente sic subito facta 
volubilis ceperat in omnibus variari."^ 

iCf. JV/.,VL 8,6-7 : — 

" E'n breve spazio ne caccio di fuore 
Troilo e Troia, ed ogni altro pensiero 
Che'n lei fosse di lui o falso o vero." 

2 T. and C, V. 764-770. Cf. V. 912, 1006-1008, for 
which the Filostrato does not furnish an analogue. 

3 Historia, sig. 1 3 recto, col. 2. Cf . R. de T., 13823- 
13827: — 

" Anceis que venist le quart seir 
!N*ot el corage, ne voleir 
De retorner en la cite 



TO GUIDO BELLE COLONNE 89 

In tlie three lines which describe the 
death of Hector is a phrase of which the 
syntactical position, which offers difficulty, 
is best explained by a comparison with the 
parallel passage in Guido : — 

" For as he drougli a king by th' aventayle, 
TJnwar of this, Achilles through the mayle 
And through the body gan him ryve." ^ 

Son corage est molt tost mue 
Poi veritable et poi estable." 

Cf. FiL, VL 9, 1 = r. mid C, Y. 842. Cf. also R. de T., 
13403-13408; Constans Chrestomathie de V ancien frangaise, 
1884, p. 62, II. 169 ff., a mere general statement in which 
Broatch (I.e., p. 18) somehow finds the same definite state- 
ment as in Guido. Lydgate in his Troy-hook (sig. R 
3 verso, col. 1-2), refers his readers to Chancer's poem 
for the complete story of Troilus and Criseyde, who are 
only incidentally mentioned in Guido's narrative, but on 
this one point introduces the statement of the Historia in 
a garbled form : — 

" But Guydo sayth longe or it was nyght. 
How Cryseyde hath forsake her owne knight 
And gave her herte unto this Diomode, 
Of tendemesse and of womanhede." 

1 T. and C, V. 1558-1560. 



90 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

" Achilles . . . accepta quadam lancea valde 
forti non advertente Hectare, velociter in Hec- 
torem irruit."^ 

Finally, when in one of his closing 
stanzas, — 

" Lo here, of Payens corsed olde rytes, 
Lo here, what alle hir goddes may availle ; 
Lo here, these wrecched worldes appetytes ; 

1 Historia, sig. i 6 recto, col. 1 ; cf . 1 3 recto, col. 1. The 
rest of the passage is due to Benoit., R. de T,, 16166-16178, 
esp. 16169 (cf . Hertzberg, I.e., p. 204) : — 
" Par la ventaille le teneit." 

" Aventayle " has been listed with " Romance words 
that end with a consonant in French [but] take an -e- in 
the Troilus" G. L. Kittredge, Observations on the Lan- 
guage of Chaucer's Troilus, p. 87 ; where the O. F. form 
"esventail" is given. Broatch {I.e., p. 19), who questions 
Skeat's attribution (I.e., p. Ix.) of the original to a passage 
in Guido, says, " Chaucer might perhaps be allowed to 
have invented the ' eventaille.' " The aventaille of the 
twelfth to fourteenth centuries was a hood-shaped head- 
dress made of chain-mail, protecting the forehead and 
chin, on which the helmet rested, and the front part of 
which fell on the breast. (J. Quicherat, Melanges d'arehe- 
ologie, etc., 1886, pp. 314-324 ; Hist, du eostume en France, 
pp. 133, 288 ; Viollet-le-duc, Diet, du mohilier frangais, 
vol. VI. pp. 353-357 ; 105-107, Plates.) Cf . Skeat, Works 
of Chaucer, vol. V. p. 352. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOXXE 91 

Lo here, the fyn and guerdon for travaille 
Of Jove, AppoUo, of Mars of swich rascaille 
Lo here, the forme of olde clerkes speche. 
In poetrye, if ye hir bokes seche,"^ 

which form a pendant to a preceding one 
in which the finale of the story is given, 
as found in the Filostrato^' he moralizes on 
his poem/ showing an intolerance not found 
elsewhere in his works ^ toward the pagan 
deities, whom he has utilized for poetical 

1 T. and C, Y. 1849-1855 ; cf . Y. 206-207, B. of D. 

52-55 : — 

" And in this boke were wiitten fables 

That clerkes badde, in olde tyme 
And other poets, put in ryme 
To read." 

2 T. and C, Y. 1828-1834 = Fil, YIH. 28. 

3 Cf . L. of G. W., 468-474. 

4 There is only one other passage in Chaucer, and that 

in a poem written in the same period as the Troilus, in 

which a like sentiment is found. Cf. The Former Age^ 

57-59 : — 

'^ Yit was not Jupiter the hkerous 

That first was father of delicacye, 

Come in this world," 

and with this cf . Paradiso, XV. 107 ff. 



92 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

purposes in this very poem/ lie shows the 
influence of passages in the Historia in 
which Guido inveighs against the deceptions 
and falsities of heathendom.^ 

A Pandarus is mentioned first in the 
list of allies who came to aid Troy, accord- 
ing to the narrative of both Benoit and 
Guido, and the same person finds place in 
another episode.^ Boccaccio has adopted 

1 T. and C, I. 6-9 ; III. 1-46 ; IV. 22-26. 

2 Historia, sig. e 5 recto, col. 2 — e 6 recto, col. 1 ; 
i 3 recto, col. 1. In the Troilus, as in the other poems, 
Chaucer shows an acquaintance with a late recension of 
the Roman de Thebes. For similarity in language and 
sentiment with the stanza of Chaucer, these lines may be 
quoted (R. de T. ed. Constans, col. II. p. 15, 4337- 
4442): — 

" Ff ors solement danz Jupiter 
Qui tint un dart agu de fer 
Mars fu dejoste lui a destre ; 
Le proz Pallas fu a senestre 
Cil dui valent en bataille ; 
Plus que toute I'autre raschaille.'* 

^ Among the combatants in the fourth battle is men- 
tioned {R. de T. 11179) " Car le reis i fu Pandarus '* 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 93 

this name as that of the consm of the 
heroine of the Filostrato, — who, in the 
Troilus, has become her uncle/ — and 

(no equivalent in Historia, sig. h 4 verso, col. 1), -who 
fights with Agamemnon (11217-11220) : — 

** Agamemnon et Pandarus 

Se porterent des chevax jus, 

Bien s'ateinstrent et se ferirent 

Et durement se combatirent," 

which Guido renders (Historia, sig. h 5 recto, col. 1), — 

" Rex agamemnon et rex pandalus {sic} inter in simul 
concurrentes ambo se sternunt ab equis." 

Lydgate {Troy-book, sig. Q i verso, col. 2) makes the 
name " Pantysylaus " ; the Gest Hystoriale, 7460, omits 
the episode. There is nothing in the Latin text in the 
corresponding passages {Historia, sig. g 4 verso, col. 1 ; 
i 1 recto, col. 2) to answer to Benoit's mention {R. de T. 
8101) of "Li reis Pandarus de Sezile," as one of those 
who did not go out to fight in the second battle ; nor to the 
lines, in the account of the conference of the Greeks and 
Trojans to arrange for the exchange of prisoners, and in 
which permission for the return of the daughter of 
Calchas to her father is granted (cf. p. 104), R. de T., 
12937-12939 : — 

" Agamemnon et Menelaus 

Reis Pandarus et Aiaus. 

Et li halt home des Grezeis." 

1 FiL, n. 20, 6 ; 23, 2 ; 27, 7 = T. and C, 1. 975. 



94 CHAUCEK'S INDEBTEDNESS 

through his story^ which passed through 
such various vicissitudes^ in English it has 
come to be a term of reproach. Chaucer 
likewise has not hesitated to take a name 
from one of the sources^ and by various 
changes, has created an entirely new 
character. In the list referred to, we 
find in Guido the phrase, — 

" Sciendus est ergo quod de regnis eorum licet 
dares frigius nihil inde dixerit venerunt tres 
reges cum plus quam tribus milibus militum 
armatorum, rex videlicet Pandarus, rex Thabor 
et rex Andastrus," ^ 

^ Historia, sig. f 5 verso, col. 1-2. " Pandorus " in 
text, but the correct reading is confirmed by the original 
passage in the R de T.^ 6645-6646, cf. Constans, Z.c, 
p. 54: — 

" De Sezile i vint Pandarus 
Hupoz li vielz et Adrastus," 

(which in turn renders the phrase in Dares, 22, 15, " De 
Zelia Pandarus Amphius Adrastus ") ; and Lydgate's 
translation (^Troy-hook, sig. M 5 recto, col. 2), "The 
first of them was called Pandarus," although in the Gest 
Hystoriale (8536) he is given a Celtic surname — " Pen- 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 95 

and just as the Italian writer made use of 
Pandarus, so Cliaucer, by a metathesis of 
form and a change of sex, gives Criseyde 

dragon the pert," while Adrastus becomes " Adasthon " 
(5438). Benoit based part of his episode of <' the dread 
Saggitarius " (R. de T., 12207-12348) upon the passage 
in Dictys (II. 40-41), which tells of the exploits of the 
Lycian archer, Pandarus, and his death by the hands of 
Diomedes. (Joly, I.e. vol. I. p. 209, cf. p. 229 ; W. Greif, 
Die mittelalterichen Bearbeitungen der Troyanersage, Mar- 
burg, 1885, p. 00. ; R. Jaeckel, Dares, Phrygius und Benoit 
de Ste. More, Breslau, 1875, p. 53 ; E. Meybrinck, I.e., p. 23.) 
This Pandarus and another, the companion of ^neas, are 
mentioned in the Mneid (V. 496; IX. 672; XI. 396). 
It is unnecessary to assume, as Hertzberg, that {I.e., 
pp. 189-200, accepted by G. Koerting, Boecaccio's Lehen, 
p. 591) " den ]S"amen Pandarus als vox hybrida des Omens 
wegen ausgedeutet und fur den Freund gewahlt hat, der 
dem Troilus alles giebt, Leben und Lebensgliick." This 
explanation is based upon that given in a passage in the 
Prcemio of the Filostrato in which the title is explained 
as being about a '' uomo vinto e abbattuto da amore, (p. 1, 
cf. Hertzberg, I.e., p. 197) ; but this symbolical explana- 
tion may not be Boccaccio's (cf. H. L. D. Ward, Cat. 
of Romances, vol. I. p. 68 ; P. Savj-Lopez, Rom, vol. 
XXVII. pp. 444-445) . Landau, ( G. Boeeaeeio, p. 90), and 
Morf (Rom^ XXI. p. 106) notice the use of name in 
Benoit. 



96 CHAUCER'S mDEBTED:N^ESS 

a niece with the name of Tharbe/ in the 
same way as he found the name of another 
niece^ ^'Flexippe/' in that of the uncle of 
Meleager, '^ Plexippus/' ^ an outline of 
whose history is given in the Troilus^ 
taken from Ovid.^ Again, when Pandarus, 
to alarm Criseyde, states that Troilus — 

1 T. and C, 11. 815-816, 1563 : — 

" And up and doun ther made many a wente 
Flexippe, she, Tharbe and Antigone." 

" Antigone, hir sister Tarbe also." 

2 Ovid, Met., VIII. 439-440 : — 

" hausitqne nef ando 
pectora Plexippi, nil tale timentia, ferro." 

3 T. and C, V. 1464-1484; cf. C.T., A, 2069-2071. 

4 Ovid, Met., VIII. 260-532. On Latin proper names 
of masculine gender which " have lost a final -5, sometimes 
with further change of form," cf. ten Brink, Chancers 
Sprache und Verskunst, p. 264; Kittredge, I.e., pp. 382- 
383, when the masculine form would be identical with 
the feminine as in this example. The forms of the names 
in the line "Circes eke, and Calipsa" (H. of F., 1272), 
are already found in Benoit and Guido. Ulysses's ad- 
ventures with Circe and Calypso in these two writers 
(i2. de T., 28576 ff., Constans in Hist, de la langue et 
la leii. dt fran^aise, p. 196; Hist., sig. o 1 verso, col. 2; 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOXNE 97 

" seyth him told is, of a freend of his 
How that ye sholde love oon that hatte Horaste, 
For sorwe of which this night shall been his 
laste,^ 

and the heroine denies the charge with the 
answer, — 

" Horaste ! alias ! and f alsen Troilus ? 
I knewe him not, god helpe me so," ^ 

the name of this fictitious lover seems to 
have been borrowed from Guido's account 
of Orestes in which the name always appears 
as " Horestes." ^ 

^vliere false reading "Calipha"), form one episode, the 
source from which Gower drew his account, and to which 
he refers elsewhere. (C. A. VI. 1391 ff., VIII. 2598 ff. ; 
Mirour de Vomme, 16674 ff. ; Balades, XXX. 12 ; Traitie, 
VI. 17 ff .) 

1 T. and C, HI. 796-798. ^ /j^v/., ni. 806-807. 

3 Historia, sig. m 8 verso, col. 2 ; n 6 recto, col. 2, 
"De Horeste vindicante mortem patris," while in the 
R. de T. (27958, 28157, 28166, 28182) the name always 
appears as "Orestes." Kittredge (p. 347) notes the 
forms " Horestes," " Horest[e] " in Gower's account 
(C. A., m. 1885 ff., cf. Traitie IX. 18), which is 
based upon both sources. The "fals Poliphete " (T. and 
C, II. 1467, cf. 1615, 1618) who, in an episode which is 



98 CHAUCER'S INDEBTED:^rESS 

There are a number of details in the 
English poem, not found in the Filostrato, 
which could have been suggested equally 

an innovation of the English poet (II. 1394-1757, III. 
50-224), is charged by Pandarus with bringing "advo- 
cacyes newe " against Criseyde, must be the " Cererique 
sacrum Polyphoeten " of the ^neid (VI. 484) who as a 
Trojan priest could very properly take steps against the 
daughter of the renegade Calchas. The Greek leader 
Polypoetes, whom Hector is stripping of his armor, 
when he is slain by Achilles, according to the narrative 
of Dares (30, 5-10), does not appear in either Benoit or 
Guido. In that episode the name of the Greek is not 
given (R. de T., 16166 ; Historia, sig. i 6 recto, col. 1), 
but the French poet, making two episodes of the one in 
his original, represents Hector as slaying one Politenes just 
before (R. de T., 16105-16148 ; Historia, sig. i 5 verso, col. 
2). This name is that substituted by Benoit (R, de T., 
5671, 8252-8253, " Politenes ") for the classical Philoctetes 
(Dares, 19, 2), which again is displaced in Guido by Poli- 
pebus (Historia, sig. e 3 verso, col. 1), while Polypoetes 
appears in both authors as Polibetes (R. de T., 5663, 8243, 
9981 ; Historia, I.e.), and in Guido as a doublet of the 
name in the form Polipotes (Historia, I.e.) . He appears 
elsewhere in Guido as Philotois (sig. g 4 verso, col. 2), 
and again as Philit(h)eas (sig. h 1 verso, col. 1; h 5 
recto, col. 1), which corresponds in all these places to 
Benoit's Filitoas (R. de T., 8189, 9065, 9375). T. E. 
Oliver, Milet's Destruction de Troye., p. 229. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOXXE 99 

well by passages in either Benoit or Guido. 
Siicli are the allusions to the journey of 
Calchas to Delphi and his subsequent 
actions/ as he 

" Knew wel that Troye sholde destroyed be, 
By answere, of his god, that highte thus, 
Daun Phebus or Apollo Delphicus. 
So whan this Calkas knew by calcuhnge 
And eek by answere of this Apollo, 
That Grekes sholden swich a peple brings 
Thorugh which that Troye moste been 
for-do ; " 2 

" AppoUo hath me told it feithfully ; " 3 

1 Cf . p. 7i, note. 

2 T. and C, I. 68-74. FiL, I. 8, 7-8 has merely 

" Conobbe e vide, dopo lunga guerra 
I Troian morti e distrutta la terra," 

which is again translated in T. and C, I. 76-77. 

3 T. and C, TV. 114. Skeat (I.e., p. 462) wrongly 
states that Guido puts Calchas " in the place of Homer's 
Chiyses," as the latter appears in Benoit as a fellow- 
priest of the former (R. de T., 25618-25619 ; Eistoria, 
sig. m 4 verso, col. 2), after he had come to the Greek 
camp to recover his daughter Astronomen (26746-26907), 
an incident omitted in Historia, sig. n 1 recto, col. 1. 



L.cr 



100 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

" Thus shal I seyn, and that his coward herte 
Made him amis the goddes text to glose 
When he for ferde out of his Delphos sterte," ^ 

and to the treason of Antenor, — 

" This folk desiren now deliveraunce 
Of Antenor, that broughte hem to mischaunce! 

For he was after traytour to the toun 

Of Troye ; alias ! they quitte him out to 

rathe. 
O nyce world, lo, thy discrecioun ! " 2 

which are told at length in both the Latin 
and the French romances.^ 

Again, when Chaucer introduces Troilus 
returning from battle past Criseyde's house : 

" For thurgh this strete he moot to palays ryde; 
For other wey is fro the yate noon, 
Of Dardanus, there open is the cheyne," * 

1 T. and C, IV. 1409-1411; cf. 1396, "For al Ap- 
pollo, or his clerkes lawes." 2 j^. ^nd C, IV. 202-206. 

3 R. de T., 24373-26038; Historia, sig. m 1 recto, col. 1 ; 
cf. Hertzberg, I.e., p. 203; Skeat, Z.c, p. Ivii; Broatch, 
I.e., p. 16. 

4 T. and C, 11. 616-618. Skeat, I.e., p. 470, thinks that 
the opening of the " cheyne " refers to the street. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 101 

there is a reminiscence of the passage in 
both authors, in which Hector orders that 
Dardanides, one of the six gates of Troy/ 
be opened to allow the egress of his army 
to meet the Greeks in their second battle.^ 
When Chancer writes, — 

" At whiche day was taken Antenore, 
Maugre Polydamus or Monesteo, 
Santippe, Sarpedon, Polynestore, 
Polyte, or eek the Trojan daun Ripheo," ^ 

he has been directly dependent upon Boc- 
caccio for the list of names, even retaining 
their Italian forms, — 

" Ed assai ve ne furon per prigioni 
Nobili re, ed altri gran baroni. 
Tra quali fu il magnifico Antenorre, 
Polidamas suo figlio, e Monesteo, 
Santippo, Serpedon, Polinestorre, 
Polite ancora, ed il troian Rifeo," * 

1 R. de r., 3129-3139 ; cf . Constans, I.e., p. 67. Hisforia, 
sig. c 1 verso, col. 1 ; cf . Hertzberg, I.e., pp. 191-192. 

2 J?, de T., 7643-76.58; Historia, sig. g 3 recto, col. 2. 

3 T. and C, IV. 50-53. ^ p^^ ly. 3^ i_4. 



102 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

but has made a radical change in the state- 
ment of the facts. For both in the Roman 
de Troie} and the Historia^ Polydamas — 
the other names are additions of the Italian 
poet — appears, not as the fellow-prisoner, 
but as the distressed son who uselessly 
attempts the rescue of his father. And it 
was by this change that the English poet 
avoided the inconsistency of which Boc- 
caccio was guilty in having Troilus and 
Pandarus visit Sarpedon, of whose return 
from captivity he makes no mention.^ 
Again, if Chaucer's lines, — 

" Of Pryamus was yeve, at Greek request 
A tyme of trewe," * 

1 n. de T., 12401-12415. 

2 Historia, sig. h 6 verso, col. 2 — i 1 recto, col. 1. 
^Fil, V. 38-48; T. and C, V. 430-500; cf. W. M. 

Rossetti, Comparison, etc. p. 246 ; Skeat, I. c, p. 497. 

4 T. and C, IV. 57-58. Cf. variants : — 
" But natheles a trewe was ther take 
At gret requeste." 
" To (of) Priamus was yeve at his (gret, Grek, Grekes) 

requeste 
A time of trewe." 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 103 

flatly contradict the statement in the 
Filostrato, — 

" Chiese Priamo triegua, e fu gli data,"i 

it is because the English poet accepted in 
preference the joint authority of his two 
other sources. According to Benoit and 
Guido, the Greeks send Ulysses and Dio- 
medes as legates to ask for a cessation of 
hostilities under the plea that they wish to 
bury their dead, which are breeding disease 
in their camp. In the council that Priam 
calls, Hector alone speaks against granting 
the truce because he thinks that the true 
reason for the Greeks' request is that they 
may obtain provisions. But the opinion of 
the majority, with which Priam agrees, pre- 
vails,^ and in an ensuing conference of the 
Trojan and Greek leaders, arrangements 
are made for the exchange of Thoas and 

1 FiL IV. 4, 1. 

2 cf. Dares, 27, 11-28, 3. 



104 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

Antenor; and, at the request of Calchas 
through his superiors, Priam is not unwill- 
ing to allow the daughter of the recreant 
Trojan to go to her father in the Greek 
camp.^ 

And from this narrative Chaucer modi- 
fied the story as he found it in his Italian 
prototype. He follows Boccaccio in making 
the return of Antenor — who has been 
given to Calchas as a personal prisoner — 
contingent upon that of Criseyde/ but in- 
troduces Thoas, whom he does not else- 
where mention, as one of the parties in the 
exchange of prisoners : — 

" And of this thing ful sone his nedes leyde 
On hem that sholden for the tretis go, 

1 R. de T. 12690-12986 ; Historia, sig. i 1 recto, col. 1 ; 
i 1 verso, col. 1 ; cf, wrong account in Skeat. I.e., p. 486. 

^FiL, IV. 10, 4-6; 12, 7-8; 13; 14, 1-3; 15, 6-8; 
17,5-8; 43,1-4; 78, 7-8; VI, 19, 2-3; T.andC.,IY. 
Ill, 133-136, 140-147, 149, 177, 195-196, 207-212, 344- 
347, 663-665; V. 905. There is no equivalent in the 
English poem for Fil., V. 1, 2-3; 8, 5-8. Cf. Oliver, 
Milefs Destruction, pp. 98-100. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 105 

And hem for Antenor ful ofte preyde 

To bringen hoom king Thoas^ and Criseyde."^ 

Again, the speech of Hector in the Trojan 
" parlement " against the exchange of a 
woman for a man/ which finds no precedent 
in the Filostrato, was no doubt suggested 
by the similar position he takes concern- 
ing the truce in the common sources of the 
English and Italian poems, and the outcry 
of the people against this plea * is suggestive 

1 The manuscript reading " Toas," adopted by Skeat, 
is not justified by spelling in either Benoit or Guido. 

2 T. and C, IV. 135-138 ; cf . Hertzberg. I.e., p. 203. 
Lydgate Troy-look, sig. Q 5 verso, col. 2, r verso, 
col. 2 ff., has combined the narratives of Guido and 
Chaucer. It may be noted that MS. Harl., 1239, an in- 
ferior manuscript, has a reading which obviates the 
" Thoas " episode in Chaucer : — 

" And hem ful ofte specyally preyde 
For Antenor to bringe home Creseide " 

(Globe Chaucer, p. 510 ; cf. p. xlii. ; Skeat, I.e., Ixxii.). 

3 T. and C, IV. 176-182 ; cf. Chaucer's introduction 
of him as a friend of Criseyde in her case against Poli- 
phete, n. 1450-1466, 1481 ; cf . I, 113-123. 

4 T, and C, IV. 183-196. 



106 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

of their better expression of opinion upon 

Calchas when they learn that he wishes his 

daughter, as stated in the same authorities.^ 

When the heroine meets her father, she 

"Stood forth mewet, milde, and maiisuete,"^ 
as in the Filostrato, 

" Ella si stava tacita e modesta," ^ 
while in the narrative of both their prede- 
cessors, the heroine reproaches her father 
bitterly for having such faith in the answers 
of Apollo, which are not assured, as to leave 
his honorable position in Troy to become an 
ally of the bitter foes of his native country ; * 
to which Calchas replies by saying, that he 
has the undoubted promise of the gods that 
Troy will be destroyed in a short time, and 
that it will be better for them to escape the 
fate of the other inhabitants ; whereupon 
Breseida seems to accept the situation, espe- 

1 R. de T., 12967-12972 ; Historia, sig. i 1 verso, col. 1. 
2 T. and C, v. 194. ^ jru,^ y. 14, 3. 

* Broatch (I.e., p. 16) says that in Guido, " the speech 
of Briseida is mere railing." 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 107 

cially when the Greek princes receive her 
with all kindness.^ But just as Boccaccio 
in the discussion of Troilus with his mis- 
tress before her departure from Troy antici- 
pates the speech of Calchas,'-^ and foretells 
her favorable reception by the Greeks/ so 
Chaucer in the corresponding place in his 
poem has Criseyde tell how she is going to 
rebuke her father.* 

In Boccaccio's poem, the heroine merely 
states that she will persuade her father 
to allow her return to Troy, to recover 

her property which 

" el per avarizia 
Delia mia ritornata ayra letizia." ^ 

^R. de r., 13684-13830; Historia, sig. i 2 verso, 
col. 2 — 13 recto, col. 2. 

^FiL, lY. 142, 2-3; T. and C, lY. 1479-1482 ; cf. E. 
de T., 13767-13778. Historia, sig. i 3 recto, col. 1, 
" Scio enini . . . trucidatis." 

3 FiL, IV. 142, 4-5 ; T. and C, TV. 1485-1488 ; E. de T., 
13814-13822. Historia, sig. i 3 recto, cols. 1-2, "In 
adventu . . . replent earn." 

4 Cf. Skeat, I.e., p. Ivii. ; Broatch, I.e., p. 16. 
5Fz7., lY. 136. 



108 CHAUCER'S IXDEBTED:^ESS 

In the Troilus this is elaborated into a 
definite plan, by which she is to bribe, 
deceive, and cajole Calchas into repudiat- 
ing the authority of the oracles of Apollo.^ 
And, in the following lines, there is a 
reminiscence of the speech of Brisaide to 
her father in the earlier writers : — 

ir. and C, IV. 1356-1414. Cf. « Amphibologia ; 
ambigua dictio . . . ut illud responsum ApoUinis ad 
Pyrrhum, 

* Aio te, Aiacida, Romanos vincere posse.' 

In quo non est certum quern in ipso versn monstraverit 
esse victorem " (Isidorus, Etymologiarum, Lib. I. ch. 34; 
Migne, Patr., vol. 82, col. 109). Chaucer makes use of an- 
other etymology from the same source in the Persones 
Tale, where '' seint Isidre " is referred to at first hand (C. 
T., I. 551 ; Etym., Lib. XVIL ch. 7 ; Migne, Z.c, col. 615 ; 
cf. C. T., I. 85). But the first definition of Isidore is 
based upon a chapter in Cicero's De Divinatione (II. 56), 
where oracles are scored in a passage much resembling 
Chaucer's lines, "Tuis enim oraculis Chrysippus totum 
volume n implevit partim f alsis, ut ego opinor, partim casu 
veris, ut fit in omni oratione ssepissime, partim flexiloquis 
et obscuris ut interpres egeat interprete et sors ipsa ad 
sortes referenda sit, partim ambiguis, et quae ad dialec- 
turn deferendae sint." Then follow references to " hanc 
amphiboliam" (in inferior texts " amphibologiam "), 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 109 

" For al Appollo, or his clerkes lawes, 
Or calculinge avayleth nought three hawes ; 

the answer of the oracle to Pyrrhus, cited above, and 
" Ula amphibolia," which was given to CrcBSUs. 

Chaucer's definition of Boccaccio's word " ambages " 
(T.and C, V. 898-899),— 

" That is to seyn, with double wordes slye, 
Swich as men clepe a word ' with two visages,' '* 
is rather that of " amphibologyes," which he uses as a 
synonym. A misunderstanding of another passage {De 
Div., II. 54-55, " Quamobrem . . . Cassandra ") seemed 
to have supplied him with his second name for Cassan- 
dra (r. and C, V. 1450-1451) : — 

" For which he for Sibille his suster sente 
That called was Cassandre eek al aboute." 

This work of Cicero is largely taken up with an 
adverse criticism of the work of the Stoic Chrysippus on 
dreams and oracles, and it may be to it that Chaucer 
refers, in the Wife of Bath's Prologue, as being one of 
the books " bounden in one volume " that Jankin had 
(C. r., D, 677): — 

" Crisippus, Trotula, and Helowys." 

Chaucer had found the De Diinnatione cited in Boe- 
thius (B. V. pr. 4, 11, 3 ff.), and made use of it at first 
hand in the Nonne Preestes Tale (C. T., B, 4174-4294; 
Be Div., I. 27. Cf . C. T., B, 4113-4126 ; T. and C, V. 
369-371 ; De Div., 1. 29. Cf. K. O. Petersen, Sources of 
Nonne Preestes Tale, pp. 106-110). Cf. Works of Chaucer, 
vol. v., p. 309. 



110 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

Desyr of gold shal so his sowle blende 
That, as me lyst, I shal wel make an ende. 

" And if he wolde ought by his sort it preve 
If that I lye, in certayn I shal f onde 
Distorben him, and plukke him by the sieve, 
Makinge his sort, and beren him on honde, 
He hath not wel the goddes understonde. 
For goddes speken in amphibologyes. 
And, for a sooth, they tellen twenty lyes. 

" Eek drede fond first goddes, I suppose. 
Thus shal I seyn, and that his coward herte, 
Made him amis the goddes text to glose. 
Whan he for ferde out of his Delphos sterte."^ 

Again, when Troilus foresees the argu- 
ments of her father against her return to 
the city, — 

1 T. and C, IV. 1397-1411. Cf. R. de T., 13732- 
13737 ; Historia, sig. i 3 recto, col. 1 : — 

"Sane deceperunt te Apollinis falsa responsa " 
(cf. Fil, Vn. 90, 7-8), 

" Sane non f uit ille deus AppoUo sed potius puto fuit 
comitiva infernaHum furiarum a quibus responsa susce- 
pisti." 

Cf. Skeat (I.e. p. Ivii) ; Broatch (I.e., p. 16) ; also 
p. 99. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 111 

" And over al this, your fader shal despyse 
Us alle, and seyn this citee nis but lorn ; 
And that th' assege never shal aryse, 
For-why the Grekes han it alle sworn 
Til we be slayn, and doun our walles torn," ^ 

he has enlarged upon two lines of the 
Filostrato^ by borrowing from his other 
sources.^ Chaucer's comment upon Cri- 
seyde's promises to use every means to 
return to Troy, — 

1 T. and C, TV. 1478-1482. 2 cf . p. 74, n. 

^R. de T., 13767-13773. Cf. A. Mussafia, Sitzb. der 
Wiener Ah Phil.-Hist. Klasse, vol. 67, p. 324 : — 
" Ensorquetot bien vei et sei, 
Que morz et destruiz les verrai 
Si nos vient miek aillors garir 
Que la dedanz o els morir. 
Mort seront il, vencu et pris ; 
Car li Deu Tont issi per mis, 
Ce ne puet mes longues durer ; " 
Historia, sig. i 3 recto, col. 1 : — 

" Scio enim pro certo per inf abilium promisa deorum 
presentem guerram protendi non posse tempore diuturno 
et quod civitas Troie brevi tempore destruatur et ruat, 
destructis ejus omnibus nobilibus et universis plebeis ejus 
in ore gladii trucidatis. Quare carissima filia, satis est 
melius nobis bic esse quam hostili gladio serviente perire." 
Cf . p. 107, note 2. 



112 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

" And treweliche, as writen wel I finde, 
That al this thing was seyd of good entente, 
And that hir herte trewe was and kinde 
Towardes him, and spak right as she mente. 
And that she starf for no neigh, whan she 

wente 
And was in purpos ever to be trewe, 
Thus writen they that of hir werkes knewe," ^ 

part of whicli he restates later on, — 

" And trewely, as men in bokes rede. 
Men wiste never womman han the care, 
Ne was so looth out of a toun to fare," ^ 

has no parallel in the Filostrato, and reverses 
the sentiments of Benoit and Guido^ as the 
first comments on the fickle nature of the 
heroine/ while the latter follows np his 
accomit of Brisaide's sorrow at parting by 
slurs upon her sincerity, and a diatribe 
against the faithlessness of woman.* 

1 T. and C, IV. 1415-1421. Ubid., V. 19-21. 

^R. de T. 13403-13408, 13826-13827. 

^Historia, sig. i 2 recto, col. 2. T. and C, IV. 1695- 
1701, is not suggested by any passage in either Benoit or 
Guido (Skeat, I.e., p. Ivii. ; Broatch, Lc, p. 17). Chaucer 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONKE 113 

The declaration of his passion to Cri- 
seyde by Diomedes^ and her answer in 
their ride to her father's tent^ after Tro- 
ilus has dehvered her into his care/ has 
its precedent in both the 0. F. and Latin 
romances, although Chaucer is directly 

has merely developed one stanza of the Filostrato (IV. 167) 
into two of his own (1688-1701). "The day gan ryse " 
translates the Italian " s'appressava Gia I'aurora," which 
seems in turn to be suggested by Guide's phrase, " Sed 
diei hora quasi superveniente," {Historia, sig. i 2 recto, 
col. 1). 

iCf. T. and C, V. 88, "The sone of Tydeus" with 
R. de T., 13499, " Filz Tideus." Cf . p. 115, n. 2. 
2 T. and C, V. 92-175. 
3Cf. i^iY., y. 12, 2-3: — 

" a Diomede Non parl6 punto," 
with T, and C, V. 86-87 : — 

" and unto Diomede 
No word he spak, ne noon of all his route," 

where, in Chaucer's addition, may be a reminiscence of 
the list of distinguished Greeks who accompanied Dio- 
medes, according to the narrative in the R. de T., 13490- 
13494, for which Guido (Historia, sig. i 2 verso, col. 1) 
has merely, " Sed Grecis advenientibus ad recipiendum 
eandem." Cf. Oliver, I.e., p. 100. 



114 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

dependent upon the speech of the Greek 
lover in the Eomaii de Troie^ and not 
upon the mere summary of the same in 
Guido's work/ although he has abridged 
Criseyde's answer, not from that found in 
Benoit/ but from the one given by the 

"^R.de r., 13502, 13589, 13649-13673. Cf. particularly 
It. de T., 13499, 13574-13580, 13526-13528, 13561-13566, 
13523-13525, 13543-13551, with T. and C, V. 88, 109- 
112, 155-158, 162-165, 169-175; and with the last cf. 
the speech of Troilus where same passage has been used, 
T. and C, IV. 1485-1488. The same passage of Benoit 
has been utilized in the Fil, VI. 14-25, VI. 21 = T. and 
C, V. 1489-1490. Chaucer, making the first step in Dio- 
medes' wooing in Boccaccio's poem the second in his 
own, translates this in T. and C. (V. 855-942, but 940 
not in Fil. Cf. T. and C, V. 155-157). 

2 Historia, sig. i 2 verso, col. 1. 

^R. de T., 13585-13643. Yet Chaucer says (V. 176) 
that she " lyte answerde " Broatch (I.e., p. 17 ; cf . 18, 27) ; 
" But Benoit has, 13671, the original of the Chaucerian 
' thanked Diomede.' " The R. de T., 13671-13672, does 
state that Diomedes : — 

" Li a cri cent feiz merci 
Que de lui face son ami." 

(Cf. R de T., 14985, with T. and C, V. 1011) ; which is 

not quite the same thing. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 115 

latter' s plagiarist.^ The description of Dio- 

medes, — 

" This Diomedes as bokes us declare, 
Was in his nedes prest and corageous; 
With sterne voys and mighty limes square, 
Hardy, testif, strong and chevalrous 
Of dedes, lyk his father Tideus, 
And son men seyn, he was of tunge large, 
And heir he was of Calidoine and Arge," ^ 

is an enlargement upon the lines of the 
FilostratOy — 

1 Cf . p. 83 ; Hertzberg, I.e., p. 203 ; Skeat, Z.c, p. Ivii. ; 
Broatch, I.e., p. 17. 

2 T. and C, V. 799-805. Cf . 803-805, with T. and C, 
V. 932-934: — 

" ' For if my fader Tydeus/ he seyde, 
* Y-lived hadde, I hadde been er this, 
Of Calidoine and Arge a king, Criseyde ! "* 
= FiLY1.24:,l,3: — 

" Se '1 padre mio Tideo fosse vissuto, 
Di Calidonia et d' Argo saria suto." 
Guide's statement (Historia, sig. 3 verso, col. 1), "dio- 
medes . . . de terra sua argis," has been enlarged upon by 
Lydgate, unquestionably upon the authority of Chaucer, 
into "fro Calidonye and Arge" (Troy-book, sig. R 4 
verso, col. 1). Cf. Skeat's confused statement on the 
matter (^.c, p. 490). 



116 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

*' Egli era grande e bel della persona 
Giovane fresco e piacevole assai, 
E forte e fier siccome si ragiona, 
E parlante quant' altro Greco mai," ^ 

by hints drawn from Chaucer's other 
authorities. The lines in Benoit's descrip- 
tion of Diomedes, — 

" Groz et quarrez et granz ad^s," ^ 
" Molt par fu Jiardiz et veisos," ^ 

1 FiL, VI. 33, 1-4 ; cf. with 1. 4, R. de T., 5198-5199 : — 
" Mes de parole esteit noisos 
E molt esteit fox sorparlez," 
and quotation from Guido on p. 118. On defective lines 
in T. and C, Y. 799-840, W. S. McCormick, I.e., p. 543. 

2jR. de T.y 5194. But Chaucer may have gone back 
to Benoit's original, which offers a closer analogue to his 
own expression, " quadratum corpore " (Dares, 16, 19- 
20), which, however, may be better compared with the 
phrase in the description of Ajax, " quadratum valentibus 
membris" (Dares, 16, 14-15), which Benoit renders 
{R.de T., 5161-5162): — 

" Aiaus f u gros et quarrez 
De piz, de braz et de costez." 
Cf . Skeat, I.e., p. Iviii. ; Broatch, I.e., pp. 17, 26-27. 
^R.deT.,5197. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOXXE 117 

show at once the source of two of the 
details in the English poem. In another 
passage in the Roman de Troie, Achilles 
thus characterizes Diomedes in addressing 
him, — 

" Sire, gie ne me meryeil mie 

Se vos amez chevalerie 

Si fetes vos, ne poez plus 

Mar fussiez vos filz Tideus. 

Se par vos n'ert toustans meintenue ; " ^ 

" Or estes garni et prest 
De fere autretel," ^ 

and the hints borrowed thence by Chau- 
cer are too apparent to further specify. 
The term "testif " would state in a word 

ijf?. de T., 19747-19751 ed. " chevalelie," "n'est bien 
meintenue " ; but cf . L. Constans, Roman de Thehes, vol. 
n. p. cxvi. 2. 

^R. de T., 19764-19765. This passage is in the 
account of the embassy of Ulysses, Nestor, and Diomedes 
to persuade Achilles, who refrains from the war on 
account of his love for Polyxena, to come to the aid of 
the Greeks in their distress, but their prayers and re- 
proaches are in vain Guido's account is very much 
abridged (R. de T., 19395-19779; Historia, sig. k 5 



118 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

Guide's description of an unpleasant feature 
in the personality of the Greek hero : — 
" servientium sibi nimis impatiens cum molestus 
servientibus nimis esset."^ 

The visit of Diomedes to the tent of 
Calchas to woo Criseyde is found only in 
the Filostrato, but his action at parting, — 

" And after this, the sothe for to seyn, 
Hir glove he took of which he was ful fayn,"^ 

is transposed from its proper place in 
Chaucer's two other sources, where the 
same incident occurs, when Diomedes 
leaves the heroine at her father's camp.^ 
And it is to the lines of Benoit, — 

verso, col. 2 to k. 6 recto col. 2). Cf. " in his nedes," with 
T. and C, III. 1772. "In alle nedes" = Fil. III. 90, 1, 
" Nell'opere opportune." 

^Historia, sig. e 2 recto, col. 1; cf. Dares, 16, 20, 
" impatientem." For the detail " with sterne voys," there 
is no equivalent in either the French or Latin texts, but 
the same characterization may have been applied to a dif- 
ferent feature. Cf. R. de T., 5195, "La chiere avoit molt 
felonesse." Historia, I.e., "a.spectu ferox." 

2 T. and C, V. 1012-1013. » Cf. p. 113. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONXE 119 

" Un de ses ganz li a toleit 
Que nus nel seit ne perceit 
Molt s'en fait liez," ^ 

rather than to Guide's paraphrase, — 

"unam de cirothecis quam Brisaida gerebat in 
manu ab ea nuUo percipiente furtive subtraxit," ^ 

that this touch is due. Again, when Chau- 
cer writes, — 

" And after this the story telleth us 
That she him yaf the faire baye stede, 
The which she ones wan of Troilus," ^ 

he makes statements of facts, for which 

1 R. de T., 13673-13675. 

2 Historia, sig. i 2 verso, col. 2 ; cf . Skeat, I.e., pp. 
lix., 499 ; Broatch, I.e., p. 18. Yet in the phrase which 
directly precedes, there is perhaps the hint — not found 
in Benoit — for a couple of lines of Chaucer : — 

" Quare associavit earn usque ad locum quo Bresaida 
recipere iu sui patris tentoria se debebat, et ea perveniente 
ibidem ipse eam ab equo descendeus promptus adivit." 

Cf. T. and C, V. 181-182, 189: — 

" For wan she gan hir fader for aspeye, 

Wei neigh doun of hir hors she gan to sye." 

"And from her hors she alighte." 

3 T. and C, Y. 1037-1039. In 1039, 1 accept Thynne's 
reading " she " in preference to " he " of all the manu- 



120 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

Benoit was the sole authority;^ and if in 
the following lines, — 

" And eek a broche (and that was litel nede) 
That Troilus was, she yaf this Diomede," ^ 

scripts (cf. Skeat, I.e. pp. 499, Ixxiii.), as it accords 
with a statement in Benoit's account of his heroine's 
loan of the horse to Diomedes {R. de T., 15009-15014) : — 

" Un jor iert ale preier 
Qu'ele remirot le destrier 
Qui Troylus avoit este 
L'en li ot bien dit et conte 
Qu'a sa mie en esteit presenz 
Iriez en iert et molt dolenz.'* 

Cf. Works of Chaucer, ed. Bell, vol. VI. p. 23. Reading 
"he," the line would allude to another passage in the 
O.F. poem, which was rendered in Guido's work, recount- 
ing the capture of the horse of Troilus, by Diomedes, 
who had unseated its rider, and its presentation to the 
heroine, — an act of courtesy often mentioned in ro- 
mances, R. de T., 14238-14303; cf. L. Constans, Les 
MSS. du Roman de Troie, in Etudes romanes dediees a 
G. Paris, p. 214 ; Historia, sig. i 4 recto, col. 1 ; cf. Buev. 
de Com., 2661 ff.; R. de Thebes, 4363 ff. ; Saisnes, vol. 1. 
pp. 122, 126 ; Perceval, 6887 ft. ; Fergus, 4972 ff. 

1 R. de T., 15009-15054 ; cf . Skeat, I.e., pp. 499, Ixxx. ; 
Broatch, I.e., pp. 18-19, 25. 

2 T. and C, V. 1040-1041 ; cf . Skeat (I.e., p. 503), who 
does not find incident in Guido. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOXNE 121 

he adopts Boccaccio's setting of the same 
incident, in the Filostrato,^ it was to the 
O.F. poem that he had to have recourse^ 
when he continues with : — 

1 FiL, Vni. 8, 9-10 ; T. and C, V. 1658-1678 ; cf. T. 
and C, ni. 1370-1372: — 

" But wel I woot a broche, gold and asure, 
In whiche a ruby set was lyk an herte, 
Criseyde him yaf, and stak it on his sherte," 

where Chaucer introduces a new detail in his story, by 
attributing to Criseyde an action at an early period in 
her connection with Troilus, which, following Boccaccio, 
he has attributed to the hero at the time of their part- 
ing. Again, Chaucer had no precedent in any of his 
sources when he attributes to the lovers a common cus- 
tom (T. and C, m. 1368-1369 ; cf. P. Meyer ; Girart de 
Roussillon, p. 18, n. 1 ; Godefroi de Bouillon, 15, 553), — 

" And pleyinge entrechaungeden hir ringes 
Of which I can nought tellen no scripture," 

or when Criseyde says to Pandarus (T. and C, III. 
885): — 

" Have here, and bereth him this blewe ring." 

2 R. de T., 15102-15104. Seeing this on the lance of 
Diomedes (15576-15577), Troilus may know that he is 
forgotten by his beloved (15109-15112) ; furnishing the 



122 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

" And eek, the bet from sorwe him to releve, 
She made him were a pencel of hir sieve." ^ 

And while there is reference to more than 
one authority in the lines^ — 

"I finde eek in the stories elles-where, 
Whan through the body hurt was Diomede 
Of Troilus, tho weep she many a tere, 
Whan that she saugh his wyde woundes blede ; 
And that she took to kepen him good hede, "^ 

there are details mentioned which are only 
found in the French romance. Thus Guido's 
phrase, — 

"ipsum (i.e. Diomedes) precipitem dejecit ab 
equo et mortaliter vulneravit," ^ 

same motive as is suppHed by the brooch in Boccaccio 
which Chaucer made use of. (Cf . note, p. 121, n. 1). For 
custom, cf. R. de Thebes, 4:4:55, 8963; R. d' Alexandre, 401, 
7; Eneas, 9331: Octavian, 2694, 3405; Anseis, 2002, 3634, 
4719, 5000 ; Rom, vol. IV. p. 30 ; Jahr. f. rom. u. engl. 
Lit., vol. IX. p. 34; Auheri, 74, 18; 78, 13; Perceval, 6866. 

1 T. and C, V. 1042-1043; cf. Skeat., I.e., pp. 499, 
Ixxx. ; Broatch, he, p. 24. 

2 T. and C, V. 1044-1048. 

^ Historia, sig. k 6 verso, col. 2. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 123 

omits the specific statement found in the 
passage of the Roman de Troie, of which 
Chaucer has made use in the above lines, — 

" Come il navra Diomedes 
Parmi le cors de plein esles," ^ 

just as in Troilus's vow that if he meets 
his successful rival, — 

" trewely, if I have might and space 
Yet shall I make, I hope, Ms sydes hlede^^^^ 

there is a reminiscence of the fuller de- 
scription elsewhere in Benoit: — 

" Ala f erir Diomedes 
D'une lance grosse et poignal 
Si que I'enseigne de cendal 
Li remest parmi les costez.^^^ 

Nor is there a suggestion in the Latin of 
the French lines, — 

" Mes n'en puet pas son cuer covrir 
Que plor, e lermes, et sospir 

^R. de T., 545-546; cf. Broatch, I.e., p. 25. 

2 T. and C, v. 1704-1705. ^ ji^ ^ie T., 20066-20069. 



124 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

N'issent de li a negun fuer 
E ele en plore o les deus ielz," ^ 

as there is in the English poem. 

And, again, the reason of the change of 
number to the singular is apparent when 
Chaucer writes, — 

" But trewely the story telleth us, 
Ther made never womman more wo 
Than she, whan that she falsed Troilus,"^ 

as the soliloquy which follows is a some- 
what close version of a passage in the 
Roman de Troie^ of which Guido has only 

1 n. de T., 20197-20199, 20213. On form ielz, ueuz, 
cf. Constans., I.e., p. 47 ; JEt ded. a G. Paris, p. 224, n. 

2 T. and C, V. 1051-1053. 

3 R. de T., 20227-20330 ; T. and C, Y. 1054-1085; cf. 
esp. R. de T., 20228-20229, 20233-20234 (cf. 20255), 
20245-20252 (cf. 20665-20669), 20265-20268 (cf. 20310, 
20317-20329), 20269-20274, 20308, 20277-20280, 20234; 
T. and C, 1058-1060, 1056-1057, 1061-1066, 1068-1071, 
1072-1074, 1026-1027, 1734. Cf. Hertzberg, I.e., p. 204, 
Skeat, I.e., p. 500 ; Broatch, I.e., p. 24. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 125 

a short summary/ and wliich was entirely 
omitted by Boccaccio. 

If the English poet, after telling of her 
final decision to return the love of Dio- 
medes, declares, — 

" Ne me ne list this sely womman chyde 
Ferther than the story wol devyse. 
Hir name, alias ! is publisshed so wyde, 
That for hir gilt it oughte y-now suffyse. 
And if I mighte excuse hir any wyse, 
For she so sorry was for Mr untrouthe, 
Y-wis, I wolde excuse hir yet for routhe,"^ 

as in an earlier passage he writes, — 

" For how Criseyde Troilus forsook, 
Or at the leste, how that she was unkinde, 
Mot hennes-forth ben matere of my book. 
As wry ten folk thorugh which it is in minde. 
Alias I that they shulde ever cause finde 
To speke hir harm ; and if they on hir lye, 
Y-wis, hemself sholde han the vilanye," ^ 

1 Historia, sig. 1 1 recto, col. 1. 

2 T. and a, V. 1093-1099. « t;^^^.^ ly. i5_2i. 



126 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

in the first of these passages there is a 
veiled allusion, as in the second a direct 
reference, to the slighting comments of 
Guido upon the actions of the heroine in 
particular/ as well as upon the falsity of 
womankind in general, which in his char- 
acter of a woman-hater he brings in through- 
out his work. 

While, in the Filostrato,^ Cassandra, who 
has heard from Deiphobus the cause of the 
evil plight of Troilus which he had acci- 
dentally discovered, comes to persuade the 
latter to forget the faithless low-born 
daughter of Calchas, in the Troilus^ the 
hero sends for her as a seer to interpret 
his dream, — to which in the Italian poem 

1 Historia, sig. i 2 recto, col. 2 ; i 3 recto, col. 2 ; 1 
1 recto, col 1 ; yet for the general statements Guido found 
his material in the R. de T. (cf. 13412-13465, 14968- 
14982). Lydgate bitterly reproaches Guido for his mis- 
ogyny = Troy-hook, sig. d 1 verso, col. 2 ; Hertzberg, Z.c, 
185 ; Dunger, I.e., p. 62, n. Morf ., Rom, vol. XXI. p. 92. 

2 Fil., YII. 77-87. 3 T. and C, V. 1443-1526. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 127 

he himself has given the same meaning,^ — 
and in introducing this new motive, Chau- 
cer has been unquestionably influenced by 
the prominent part which this daughter of 
Priam's plays in the mediaeval Troy legend, 
and from which, as it has been noticed, 
he took the cue in other poems.^ Chaucer's 
indebtedness for different details in his few 
lines upon Hector's death, to both his 
French and Latin sources, has already been 
noted. And again, in the lines that tell of 
the grief which it caused, — 

" For whom, as olde bokes tellen us 
Was maad swich wo, that tonge it may not telle, 
And namely, the sorwe of Troilus,"^ 

it is to be noticed that he has supplemented 
Boccaccio's general statement,- — 

iFz7.,yiL27; T. and C.,Y. 1513-1519. It maybe noted 
that, as in the Filostrato (VII. 88), Troilus supposes that 
his sister gained her knowledge through divination, his 
reproach of her incompetence (VII. 89-90) is made use 
of by Chaucer {T. and C, V. 1520-1529). 

2 Cf. pp. 62-63. 3 T. and C, V. 1562-1564. 



128 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

" L' alto dolor, da non poter mai dire,^ 
Che '1 padre, ed egli e' fratei per la morte 
Ebber d' Ettor,"2 

by a specific detail of which the source is 
in Benoit's lines, — 

" Molt le regrete Troylus 
Car riens soz ciel n'amot il plus." ^ 

Again, the lines, — 

" In many cruel batayle, out of drede, 
Of Troilus, this ilke noble knight, 
As men may in these olde bokes rede, 
Was sene his knighthod and his grete might. 

1 Cf. R. de T., 16305-16307 : — 

" Lk est li dols si angoisseos 
Si pesmes et si dolereos 
Que nel porreit riens raconter." 
Gest Historale, 8717 : — 

" Hit were tore any tunge tell hit with mouthe." 

2 FiL, VIII. 1, 3-5. 

3 R. de T., 16351-16352. The grief of Paris is tbere, 
however, " namely " set forth, 16323-16350. Guido merely 
has {Historia, sig. i 6 recto, col. 2) : — 

Sic et dolentes fratres ejusdem dolores casu universa- 
liter torquebantur. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOXXE 129 

And dredelees, his ire, day and night, 
Ful cruelly the Grekes ay aboughte," ^ 

for wliich the Filostrato only offers a single 
parallel line, — 

" Nelle battaglie Troilo sempre entrava," ^ 

allude to the combats in which Troilus 
was preeminent after the death of Hector, 
which are fully described by both Benoit^ 
and Guido.* 

1 T. and C, V. 1751-1756. On phrase "his ire 
aboughte" cf., pp. 66, n. 2, and i^zY., Vin, 27, 1-2 = T. 
and C, V. 1800-1801 : — 

" L' ira di Troilo in tempi diversi 
A Greci nocque molto senza f alio." 

2 Fil, Vni. 25, 7. 

^R. de T., 19153-19174, 19350-19355, 19994-20021, 
20123-20139, 20454-20461, 20529-20534, 20560-20564, 
20820-20828, 21174-21175. 

* Historia, sig. k 5 verso, col. 1-1 2 verso, col. 2 ; Guido's 
phrase {Historia, sig. i 5 verso, col. 1), in the account of 
the combat in which Troilus and Diomedes would have 
killed each other if Menelaus had not interfered, — 

" se graviter inipetunt in duris ictibus lancearmn," 
is nearer Chaucer's "Assayinge how hir speres weren 
whette" (T. and C, V. 1760), than Boccaccio's, — 



130 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

Chaucer's account of Troilus's death is 
summed up in one line, — 

"Dispitously him slough the fiers Achille,"^ 

" E di gran colpi f ra lor si donaro, 
Talvolta, urtando e talor nelle mani 
Le spade avendo " (Fit. YBl. 26, 3-5), 

which seems to have its source in the R. de T., 15588- 

15591,— 

" A f erir d'espee et de lance 
Tel geu voleient comencier 
O les clers trenchanz branz d'acier 
De quei les testes lor seignassent," 

of which the last line seems to suggest Chaucer's (T. and 
C, V. 1762) lines : — 

"And god it woot, with many a cruel hete, 
Gan Troilus upon his helm to bete." 

Chaucer's line, T. and C, V. 1802, " For thousandes his 
hondes maden deye" is a modification of Boccaccio's 
(F^7., VIII. 28, 7) "Avendone gia morti piii di mille," 
for which Guido (Historia, sig. k 6 verso, col. 1), " Scripsit 
enim Dares quod illo die mille milites interfecit ex 
Grecis," gave the information. Cf. Dares, ed. Meister, 
p. xlvi. The same feat is attributed to Hector, R. de T., 
9957-9958 ; Historia, sig. i 4 recto, col. 1. Cf . Skeat, Z.c, 
p. Ix. ; Broatch, I.e., pp. 19-20. 
1 T. and C, V. 1806. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 131 

a translation of his Italian original, — 
" Miseramente un di 1' uccise Achille," ^ 

but there is a suggestion of the manner of 
his death in an imprecation, not found in 
the Filostrato,^ which the hero calls down 
on himself, if he should ever be ungrateful 
to Pandarus for his services : — 

" And, if I lye, Achilles with his spere 
Myn herte cleve." ^ 

Now in the narrative of both Benoit* and 
Guido,^ Achilles is represented as slaying 
Troilus by cutting off his head, but, in one 
version of a Middle English summary of a 
part of the Romaii de Troie, there is evi- 
dence collateral with that given in Chaucer, 
of the tradition according to which Achilles 
pierces his Trojan opponent with a spear — 
a point brought out in the Troilus of 
1 Fii, ynr. 27, 8. 2 pn^ ni. 15. 

3 T. and C, III. 374-375. 

4 R. de T., 21415-21416. 

5 Historia, sig. 1 2 yerso, col. 2. 



132 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

Sophocles/ and in vase paintings which 
departed from the more common version 
to follow that of the Greek tragedian.^ In 
the Seege of Troye, as it appears in MS. 
Harl. 525, it is stated that Achilles, after 
a long fight with swords, 

" Smote Sir Troyell to j)e herte 
Even ato his body he deled. "^ 

If the first of these lines is anything 
more than a mere conventional phrase, its 
coincidence with Chaucer's statement is 
striking ; but only after the publication of 

1 Schol., in Iliad, XXIV. 257, as amended by F. G. 
Welcker, Zeit.f. Alterthumsw., ISM, 'No. 3, p. 30; Die 
griechischen Tragodien mit Riicksicht auf den epischen 
Cyclus., 1839, vol. I. p. 124; Eustathius, in 11., XXIV. 
257. Cf. W. Klein, Euphronios, 1878, p. 77, n. 2. 

2 Welcker, I.e., vol. I. pp. 124-129; J. Overbeck, 
Die Bildwerke zum thebischen und troischen Heldenkreis. 
1853, p. 338; Klein, I.e., p. 85; Zuckenbach, in Johns 
Jahr. Suppl., vol. XI. pp. 610-612 ; cf . 603, 605, 609 ; A. 
Banmeister, Denkmdler der elassischen A Iterthum, p. 1902. 

3 The Seege of Troye, etc., w. 1528-1529 ; cf . pp. 
xxxi.-xl. ; Granz, Seege of Troye, etc., p. 51. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 133 

a critical edition of the Roman de Troie 
can we be assured that the two English 
writers found in their original a suggestion 
for the change of detail. 

It is to be noted that every time '^mjn 
auctor" is referred to on a specific point, 
the Fiiostrato is meant/ and if a sonnet of 
Petrarch/ given in a translation ^ in which 
" nought only the sentence " but " every 
word" has its equivalent, is attributed 
to " myn auctor Lollius," ^ the other refer- 
ence to that author is upon a detail only 
found in the work of Boccaccio.^ Again, in 

1 T. and C, 11. 699-791 = Fil, II. 69-75 ; T. and C, in. 
501-504 = Fil, ni. 3, 4-5 ; T. and C, III. 575-578, 568-570 
= Fil, ni. 21, 4-8 ; T. and C, HI. 1195-1197, cf . Fil, IH. 
31, 1-3 ; T. and C, IH. 1324-1327 (where Chaucer states 
that " thogh I can not teUen al, as can myn auctor," after 
he has taken 126 lines to enlarge upon the substance of 
21 lines in the Italian poem, T. and C, III. 1198-1323 ; 
cf. Fil, in. 31-33) ; T. and C, 1814-1817 = Fil, IV. 24, 
1-3. 2 Sonn., 88. ^ j^. ^nd C, I. 400-420. 

4 T. and C, I. 393-399. 

5 T. and C, V. 1653-1673 = Fil, VHI. 8-10; cf. p. 
121. 



134 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

speaking of his poem as a whole, Chau- 
cer only mentions "myn auctor" as his 
authority/ and three times he makes an 
indirect reference to the Italian poem.^ 
When Chaucer states that 

" Criseyde was this lady Dame a-right," ^ 

he accepts the authority of the statement 
of Boccaccio, — 

" Griseida nomata," * 

1 T. and C, I. 260-266, 11. 18, 49. 

2 T. and C, 1. 492-497 = Fil, 1. 48 ; T. and C, II. 1219- 
1225 = FiL, 11. 125-127; T. and C, V. 1758-1764 = FiL, 
VIII. 26. 3 T, and C, I. 99. 

* FiL, I. 11, 6. Chaucer seems to emphasize the cor- 
rectness of the change of the name made by Boccaccio, 
under the influence of classical authorities, in which the 
daughter of the priest Chryses plays such a prominent 
part as the captive of Achilles (cf. L. Constans in Hist, 
de la langue et lit. frangaise, vol. I. p. 209, n. ; Hertzberg, 
I.e., p. 197), without supposing the additional reason 
that " Boccaccio wollte die Chriseis als die Goldige 
gedeutet werden" (Hertzberg, I.e., p. 197, accepted by 
Koerting, Boeeaeeio, p. 591). Criseida and Griseida 
appeared as the same form in the text of the Italian 
poem, as is evident from the fact that both appear in MSS. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 135 

rejecting the name " Brisaida/' " Briseida," 
given by the French and Latin writers/ 
although he modified the spelling in later 
poems to " Creseyde." ^ 

Once he refers to a detail in his story, 
which " writen is in geste/' ^ and this 
proves to be the Filostrato ; and again, 
when he states that he is narrating the 
action of his heroine, — 

" as writen clerkes in hir bokes old," 

of Guido, where the copyists have substituted " Criseida " 
for "Briseida," the form, in the original text. (Morf, 
Rom, vol. XXI. p. 101, n. ; of. Moland et d'Hericault, 
I.e., p. cxxxv. ; Mussafia, I.e., pp. 496-4:97; Hertzberg, I.e., 
p. 197.) 

1 R. de T., 12956 ; Historia, sig. i 1. recto, col. 2. 

^Against Women Unconstant, 16; L. of G. W., 332, 
441, 469 ; cf. H. of F., 397-398 : — 

'' Eek lo ! how f als and reccheles 
Was to Briseida Achilles," 

where the English poet took the classic accusative form 
as it appeared in Ovid (Heroides, III. 137), while in 
C. T., B, 71, he gives a form, probably of his own mak- 
ing, " Brixseyde " ; cf . Her., III. 1, " Briseide." 

3 T. and C, in. 450 = Fil, in. 3, 6. A satisfactory 



136 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

he is merely translating a passage from 
the Italian poem/ which has no parallel 
in the other sources. 

explanation has not been offered as to what particular 
form of narrative is meant by "in geste" in the lines 
(C. r., B, 2122-2124): — 

" Sir, at o word, thou shalt no lenger ryme, 
Let see wher thou canst tellen aught in geste, 
Or telle in prose somwhat at the leste." 

Elsewhere the word, in its meaning of "narrative," refers 
indifferently to authorities in Latin verse or prose 
(P. ofF., 1515; L. of G. W., A, 87; T. and C, IL 83, V. 
1511; C. T., B, 1126, D, 642). Gower applies it to 
the T. and C. (Mirour de Vomme, 5253) : — 

" U qu'il oit chanter la geste 
De Troylus et de la belle 
Creseide." 

ir. and C, IIL lim = Fil,, 111,32; cf. p. 7; 
T, andC.,Y. 1478-1479: — 

" Of which, as olde bokes tellen us 
Ther roos a contek and a great envye," 

where Ovid's Metamorphoses alone is referred to (cf. 

p. 96); and again, B. of D,, 52-55: — 

" And in this boke were WTiten fables 
That clerkes hadde, in olde tyme 
And other poets put in ryme. 
To rede, and for to be in minde." 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 137 

Once he refers to "the story" for a 
detail only found in Benoit ; ^ and again ^ 
he calls attention to the same source as 
the authority for a passage which was 
necessarily dependent upon the Roman de 
Troie^ except for a detail, the hint for 
which he adopted from the Filostrato.^ In 
translating the Italian, — 

" Nell' opere opportune alia lor guerra 
Egli era sempre nell' armi il primiero 
Che sopra' Greci uscia fuor della terra, 
Tanto animoso, et si forte e si fiero 
Che ciascun ne dottava, se no erra 
La storia," * 

he adds a detail from Benoit/ and mentions 
more than the one authority cited by Boc- 

1 T. and C, V. 1051; cf. p. 124. ^ cf. p. 120. 

2 Cf. p. 119, T. and C, V. 1037. ^ jr^^ ni. 90. 
5 R. de T., 5418-5420 ; cf . Constans, Ic. p. 63 : — 

" De eels de Troie li plus bials 
E li plus prouz, fors que sis frere 
Hector." 

In Guido he is always represented as the equal of Hector. 

See p. 76. 



138 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

caccio, necessarily including his Italian 
predecessor as one of his sources : — 

" In alle nedes, for the tounes werre, 
He was, and ay the firste in armes dight ; 
And certeynly, but-if that bokes erre, 
Save Ector, most y-drad of any wight." ^ 

The description of Diomedes is, for the 
most part, based upon that given in the 
Roman de Troie, with the addition of de- 
tails from the Filostrato, and possibly a 
hint from Guido/ and here Chaucer, in 
speaking of his authorities, says that the 
" bokes us declare,"^ and "some men seyn."^ 

Only once, in his description of Troilus, 
for which he is mainly indebted to Guido's 
work, does he directly refer to this source, 
and with the indefinite term, " in storie it 

1 T. and C, III. 1772-1775. 2 cf. p. 115. 

8 T, and C, V. 799. 

4 T. and C, V. 804; cf. T, and C, I. 708. "Men 
seyn," where proverb is given, which the " Chanoun 
yeman," says he, " ones lerned of a clerk," C. T., G, 
748: cf. r. an(^ C, II. 1238. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 139 

is y-founde." ^ He mentions " these olde 
bokes " ^ as his authorities for passages in 
which he has expanded a line or two in 
the Filostrato, by a statement of events 
for which he found a detailed account in 
the works of Benoit and Guido.^ If in a 
passage in which ^ he comments upon Cri- 
seyde's actions^ the facts could have been 
furnished by all of his three sources/ the 
kindliness of his reflections upon her mo- 
tives would on this point exclude the 
authority of Guido, whom the English poet 
elsewhere in the poem indh'-ectly rebukes 
for his harsh opinion of the heroine, — 

" Alias ! that they shulde ever cause finde 
To speke her harm ; and if they on hir lye, 
Y-wis, hemselfe sholde han the vilanye," ^ 

1 T. and C, Y. 834; cf. p. 76. 

2 T. and C, Y. 1562, 1753 ; pp. 127-129. On " olde 
bokes," cf. pp. 135-186 ; T. and C, Y. 1481. 

3 Cf . pp. Ill, 127-129. 

4 T. and C, TV. 1415-1421 ; cf. V. 19-21 ; cf . pp. 111- 
112. 5 T. and C, lY., 15-18 ; cf. p. 125. 

6 T. and C, lY. 19-21 ; cf . p. 8, and C. T., F, 551, " as 



140 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

even if he writes as if he alkided to more 
than one authority, as he unquestionably 
does, when he is speaking merely of the 
facts of the story: — 

" Bisechinge every lady bright of hewe, 
And every gentil womman, what she be, 
That al be that Criseyde was untrewe, 
That for that gilt she be not wrooth with me, 
Ye may hir gilt in othere bokes see." ^ 

" The stories " are the source mentioned 
for a passage which summarizes a long 
account in the Roman de Troie and the 
HistoriaP' Twice he takes care to mention 
that certain details are not to be found in 
his authorities/ and if in his delineation of 
the character of the heroine he writes, — 

writen folk," where the Biblical narrative seems to be 
referred to. 

1 T. and a, V. 1772-1776. 

2 T. and C, V. 1044; cf. p. 122; T. and C, V. 1459, 
"old stories " = " antiche storie," FiL, Proemio, p. 7, 
An. and Arc, "olde storie," "storia antica," Tes., I. 2. 

8 T. and C, I. 132-133, V. 1086-1092; cf. pp. 82 n., 87. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 141 

" But trewely, I can not telle hir age," ^ 

he appears to fear to add a specific detail, 
which is not elsewhere vouched for. Yet 
in this very passage occurs a bit of charac- 
terization which is referred directly to the 
authority of those "who writen that her 
syen/'^ for which it is dif&cult to cite what 
may be a parallel in any of the sources.^ 
Again, in an episode of the Troilus which 
had no prototype in the story as told by 
the predecessors of the English poet, the 
reference is entirely fictitious in the lines — 

" But whan his shame gan somwhat to passe 
His resons, as I may my rymes holde, 
I yow wol telle, as techen bokes olde."* 

He unquestionably refers to the unnamed 
Italian poem as his main authority, and if 
he writes of his own poem that 

" Out of Latin in my tonge it wryte," ^ 

1 T. and a, V. 826. s Cf. p. 83 n. 

2 T. and C, V. 816. * t. and C, III. 89-91. 

5 T. and C, II. 1 



142 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

it was in order to give to his source the 
dignity that he wished to attribute to that 
of Anelida and Areite, where, in making a 
very free translation of a passage in the 
Tesaide^ he notes his intention, — 

" in Enghsh for tendyte 
This olde storie, in Latin which I fynde,"^ 

when, in fact, he is only using the words 
of the Italian poem, which treats of some- 
thing else.^ And, in the one poem he 
adopts hints from the Historia, which was 
the Latin source of the Filostrato, as in 
the other he translated passages from Sta- 

1 Tes.,1.2: — 

" Che m' e venuta voglia com pietosa 
Kima di scriver una storia antica, 
Tauto negli anni riposta e nascosa 
Che latino autor non par ne dica 
Per quel ch' io senta, in libro alcuna cosa." 

2 An. and Arc, 9-10. 

3 Cf . pp. 23-24 ; ten Brink, Chaucer, pp. 49, 53-56 ; 
Skeat, Minor Poems, p. 311 ; Koch., Eng. Stud., vol. XV. 
p. 399. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 143 

tius/ in whose work Boccaccio found sug- 
gestions for the story of the Tesaide ; so 
that he may have felt a right in both cases 
to refer to the Latin sources of his Italian 
originals as his own. It is to mystify his 
readers once more, in order to hide the 
name of his author, that he introduces the 
name of LoUius, to whom he attributed a 
history of the Trojan war/ by a misinter- 
pretation of the lines of Horace/ which he 
found cited in the Polycraticus * of John of 
SaHsbury, a work with which he was well 
acquainted.^ For elsewhere he translates 
another line of Horace/ cited in the same 

^ An. and Arc, 22-48 ; Thebias, XII. 519 ff. ; cf. Skeat, 
Chaucer's Minor Poems, pp. Ixix., 313. 
2iy. o/i^. 1468; cf. p. 51. 

3 Ep. 1. 2, 1 ff. ; cf . pp. 38-40, 46. 

4 Polycr., VII. 9 ; Migne, Patrologia, vol. CXCIX. vol. 
657. This passage has already been noted by W. E. A. 
Axon, N. and Q., Ser. 9, vol. III. p. 224. 

^ Cf . W. W. Woolcombe in Essays on Chaucer, pp. 293- 
306 ; Lounsbnry, Studies in Chaucer, vol. II. pp. 362-364. 
^ Ep., I, 10, 24: = C. r., H. 161. 



144 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

work/ a propos of the matter he is treating 
of, again he refers to it by inference as an 
authority/ and quotes from it a number of 
times without mentioning his source.^ In 
the same way in Anelida mid Arcite, where 
he equally avoids mention of Boccaccio, he 
avails himself of the name of Corinna, a 
contemporary of Pindar, who had been 
remembered down to Chaucer's day, as 
the author of a work upon the Theban 

1 Polycr., III. 8, col. 489. 

2 C. r., D. 1510-1511 ; cf . Polycr., II. 27, col. 468 ; 
Woolcombe, I.e. p. 295. 

3 a T., C. 591, 595, 603, Q21 = Polycr., I. 5; cols. 399- 
400. On " Stilbon-Chilon," cf. E. Koeppel, Anglia, vol. 
XIII. p. 183 ; K. O. Petersen, On the Sources of the Nonne 
Prestes Tale, p. 100, n. C. T., H. 226 &.=Polycr., III. 14 ; 
cf . Petersen, I.e. p. 114, n. 1 (Alexander and the pirate) ; 
possibly C, 538 ^. = Polycr., VIII. 6, col. 725; cf. Wool- 
combe, I.e. p. 296 ; and Former Age, 33-40= Po^^cr,, VIII. 
6, col. 727 ; cf . Works of Chaucer, vol. I. p. 541. On C. T., 
C. 517 ff., 527 ff., cf. Woolcombe, I.e. pp. 297-304; Works 
of Chaucer, vol. V. pp. 278-279 ; Lounsbury, I.e. pp. 364- 
372. In the B. of D., 663-664, the information from the 
Polyer., I. 5, col. 399, is at second hand, the immediate 
source being the Rom, de la Rose, 7425 ff. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOXXE 145 

story, making her with Statins the joint 
authorities of his poem,- the source of a 
large part of which has not been pointed 
out. 

When he introduces into his narrative 

^ As to the author referred to, I adopt the hint given 
by Tyrwhitt, Tvho thinks it hardly possible that Chancer 
"had met with that poem " (^Works of Chaucer, p. 461). 
The mere statement about the composition of the work 
could have been as accessible to Chaucer as that about 
Agathon, to whom he refers in another poem (L. of G. 
W., 525-526 ; of. Gary's Dante, note to Purg., XXn. 106 ; 
Bech., Anglia, vol. Y. p. 365 ; Skeat, Legend of Good 
Women, pp. xxiv.-xxvi., 149) in some mediaeval encyclo- 
pedic work. Constans {Roman de Theles, vol. 11. p. clvii., 
n. 2), who does not know of Chaucer's indebtedness to 
Boccaccio in the Anelida and Arcite, unnecessarily sug- 
gests that Chaucer may have been acquainted with a 
Latin translation or abridgment of Corinna's poem, 
though he regards it as more probable that her name, as 
that of Lollius, was used to conceal the true source. 
Hertzberg's suggestion (JaJir. f rom. und engl. Lit, vol. 
^^IT. p. 160 ; SMk. Jalir., vol. YI. pp. 173-174 ; cf . Skeat, 
Chaucer's Minor Poems, p. 312), that Corinnus, a historian 
of the Trojan war is referred to, has not a^ good ground 
for acceptance. 

^ An. and Arc, 21: — 

" First follow I Stace, and after him Corinne." 



146 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

the translation of a sonnet of Petrarch, 
as a song found in the text of his original, 
he may have confused the two Italian 
poets owing to the fact that the authorship 
of the Filostrato in his manuscript, as in 
that used by the French translator, was 
attributed to Petrarch ; ^ but the very inno- 
vation rather denotes that it was done to 
sustain the mystery with which he wished 
to surround the origin of his poem, and to 
avoid here, or elsewhere, mention of Boc- 
caccio, who has been his most important 
authority throughout all his works.*^ 

1 Cf. pp. 32-33. 

2 In the Monkes Tale in the account of Zenobia, for 
which he drew the material from Boccaccio's De Casibus 
Virorum (VIII. 6) and De Mulieribus (ch. xcviii.), if any 
reader desires details, he writes (C. T., B, 3515-3516): — 

" Let him un-to my maister Petrark go, 
That writ y-nough of this I undertake.'* 

Tyrwhitt (note to C. T., 14253, Works of Chaucer, p. 203) 
conjectured that " Boccaccio's book had fallen into 
Chaucer's hand under the name of Petrarch." 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOXNE 147 

He nowhere mentions or even indirectly 
suggests ^ the title of the Filostrato in the 
Troilus, while in the Knightes Tale^ having 
in mind the sjTnbolical meaning attributed 
to the name by Boccaccio/ he has one of 
his characters assume it instead of the name 
found in the Tesaide.^ When Chaucer has 
been at so much pains to conceal the name, 
the author, and the language of the work 
which was his main authority, it is not at 
all surprising that he does not cite by name 
Benoit or Guido. To them he merely refers 

1 The Tariant of T. and C, HI. 503, found in St. John's 
College, Cambridge, MS., 1. 1, 

" An hondred vers of which hym liste nat "write," 
is the only suggestion of the metrical stnicture of the 
original. 

2 C. T., A, li2S, '• Philostrato he seide that he heighte." 
Cf. 1558, 1728. 

3 Cf. p. 95 n. 

* Tesaide, TV. 3, has '-Pentheo." It is to be noted 
that certain lines of the Filostrato that are translated in 
the Troilus reappear in the KnigJites Tale. Cf. C. T., A, 
1010, 1101, 1163-1168; T. and C, IT. 627; I. 425; JX. 
618. 



148 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

in general terms as authorities for incidents 
in his story and details in his description 
of the characters^ not found in his Italian 
original. From their narratives he also 
borrows, without notice, material for the 
enlargement of his own story, independent 
of that of Boccaccio, but taken from the 
same places in these works, to which the 
Italian poet had resort. The suggestions 
taken from the French poem or its Latin 
plagiary — and often it is a word, a phrase, 
borrowed from one, sometimes, to supple- 
ment the statement of the other — are skil- 
fully introduced into the main texture of 
the story, in different parts of the Troilus} 
Some of these additions form an essential 

1 In the same way Gower inserts details taken from 
Benoit or Guido into his versions of incidents, the main 
body of which is borrowed from one of these authors, so 
that it is sometimes difficult to decide to which one he 
refers as an authority in the phrases " cronique," " the 
tale of Troie," " bok of Troie." Cf. Traitie, IX. 4 ; Conf. 
AmanL, III. 2641; V. 3192; I. 483; V. 3244; VII. 1559. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLOGNE 149 

part of his own story, as lie first wrote it ; 
others, again, are changes in details of state- 
ments, taken from Boccaccio, which he 
made in revising his poem.^ 

As authorities for the history of the 
Trojan war, he mentions Homer, Dictys, 
and Dares,^ as he found them cited in the 
Roman de Troie and the Historia Trojana^ 

1 As is shown by the variant readings of Harleian 
MS. 1239. 

2 Cf. p. 12. 

8 Cf. pp. 51 ff . The stanza (V. 1786-1792), 

" Go litel boke, go litel myn tragedye, 
Ther God thy makere yet er that he dye 
So sende myght to make in some comedye 
But litel book no makynge thow nenvye, 
But subgit be to alle poesye 
And kys the steppes where as thow seest space 
Yirgile, Ovyde, Omer, Lucan, and Stace," 

is an imitation of the closing lines of the TJiebaid of 
Statins (Xn. 816-819), 

" Yive, precor; nee tu divinam Aeneida tempta, 
Sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora. 
Mox, tibi si quis adhuc praetendit nubila livor, 
Occidet, et meriti post me referentur honores." 

And the last line is merely a variant of the stock formula, 



150 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

since he was acquainted with, only the work 
of Dares at first hand. In doing this he 
merely follows the precedent established by 
mediaeval writers, according to which the 
statements of a translator were as authori- 
tative as those of his original, and a citation 
at twentieth hand as good as one at first 
hand. He refers to Dares as an authority 
upon the warlike exploits of Troilus, 
and he may well be citing here at first 
hand.^ 

In his account of Hercules, Chaucer refers 
to Guido as an authority under the name of 
Trophee/ a translation of his second name 
"de Columpnis."^ For the fact that the 
^^ columne Herculis " was set up as a token 

so much used by mediaeval poets, in which the greatest 
writers of antiquity are grouped together. Cf., e.g., 
F. Michel, Tristan, vol. I. p. Ixv. ; Romania, vol. XXV. 
p. 503 ; Dante, Inf., IV. 85 ff. 

1 On Chaucer's use of Dares, cf . pp. 59, 61, n. 2, 75 n., 
82 n., 130 n. 

2 Cf . p. 55. 8 Cf. H. of F., 1469, p. 51. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 151 

of victory — a trophaeum, trophee^ — is 
emphasized by the author of the Historia, 
in the passage translated by the Enghsh 
poet/ and elsewhere.^ Chaucer considers 
the explanation of Melibee, "that is to 
seyn, a man that drinketh hony," * and the 
absurd etymologies of the name Cecilia^ as 
satisfactory, and so, " to seye in English/' 
this Latin name, makes use of a single 
word which at once defines and trans- 
lates it. 

1 Cf. p. 37 ; Works of Chaucer, vol. 11. p. Ivi., n. 1. 

2 Cf. pp. 55-57. 

^ Historia, sig. f 5 recto, col. 1. In this passage, evi- 
dently as a comment on his own name, Guido speaks 
of certain so-called " Columne Herculis," situated in the 
southern part of Italy, which, according to tradition, were 
put up by the hero in commemoration of his conquest 
there. On their site, according to Guido, the town of 
Terranova was built by Frederick II. Cf. Works of 
Chaucer, vol. II. p. Ivi., n. 1 ; Works of Gower, ed. 
G. C. Macaulay, vol. II. p. 501 ; Torraca, Studi su la lirica 
italiana del Duecento, pp. 412-416. It is conceivable that 
Chaucer referred to these columns, which he may have 
regarded as being at one of the " worldes endes." 

4 C, T., B, 2599. 5 C. T., G, 85 ff. 



152 ' CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

Lydgate finding Tropliee cited by Chaucer 
on the adventures of Hercules, of which 
Guido gives a similar account,^ noticing 
that the treatment of the story of Troilus and 
Criseyde in the English poem differs from 
that in the Historia^ supposes Chaucer's 
source for both these episodes to be a 
work in Italian.^ He himself was not 

1 In Lydgate's translation there seems to be reminis- 
cences of the lines in the Monkes Tale. (Troy-book, 
sig. B 6 recto, col. 1; cf. Works of Chaucer, vol. II. 
p. Iv.) 

2 Cf. 15, 75 n., 89 n., 115 n. ; Works of Chaucer, 
vol. II. p. 503. On Lydgate's intimate acquaintance with 
the Troilus, cf. J. Schick, Lydgate's Temple of Glass, 
p. cxxvi. The Gest Hystoriale omits details in the account 
of the lovers, because, 

"Who-so wilnes to wit of thaire wo fir, 
Turne hym to Troilus and talke there ynoghe." 
(8053-8054; cf. Works of Chaucer, vol. II. p. Ixvi.) 
Gower, who made use of the works of both Benoit and 
Guido, always refers to the story as it is found in 
Chaucer's poem. {Conf Amant., II. 2457-2459 ; IV. 2795 ; 
V. 7597-7602 ; VIII. 2531; Mirour de Vomme, 5253-5355; 
Balades, XX. 19-22.) 

3 Cf. p. 13. 



TO GUIDO DELLE COLONNE 153 

acquainted with that language/ while 
Chaucer refers to Dante ^ and Petrarch^ as 
authorities in the same Tale in which he cites 
from Trophee. He knows that Chaucer was 
acquainted with the work of Guido/ and 
accepts his authority as to the existence 

^ Bale's statements that Lydgate had travelled in 
Italy for the sake of learning the language, that Dante 
was one of the authors most studied by him, and that he 
translated some of his writings, as well as some of 
Petrarch's, have been shown to be worthless ; with how- 
ever much faith they were accepted and enlarged upon 
by the bibliographers and historians of early English 
history. (Bale, Scriptorum illusirium majoris Britanniae 
Catalogus, Bale, 1559, pp. 586, 587 ; Tanner, Bibliotheca 
Britannico-Hibernica, 1748, p. 489; Warton, History of 
English Poetry, 1824, vol. II. p. 362 ; Ritson, BiUiographia 
Poetica, p. 6 ; A. Hortis, Studi sulle opere latine del Boc- 
caccio, pp. 627 n., 646-647 ; Constans, La legende d'Oedipe, 
pp. 366-367; Roman de Thebes, vol. II. p. clxi; Morley, 
English Writers, vol. VI. p. 103; E. Koeppel, Laurents 
und Lydgates Bearbeitungen, etc., p. 83 ; Zeit. fur ver- 
gleichendes Literatur, vol. I. p. 426 ; Schick, as cited, 
pp. Ixxxviii.-xc, xcvi., clii.) 

2C. r., B, 3657; cf. p. 29 n. 

3 C. T., B, 3515 ; cf . p. 145, n. 2. 

^ He makes use of the Legend of Good Women in his 
account of Jason and Medea ; cf . pp. 51-53, 53 n. 



154 CHAUCER'S INDEBTEDNESS 

of a writer upon the Trojan war, named 
Lollius/ although, non-committal as to his 
authorship of the "Trophe." But he has 
no idea of the real name of the Italian 
work of which he speaks, or of its author, 
his favorite Boccaccio. 

1 Cf. pp. 14-15. 



ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 

By an oversight I have failed to note G. C. Macaulay's 
contributions. In a communication to the Academy of 
April 6, 1895, he maintained the theory that the work of 
Guido was not used at all in the Troilus, as Chaucer is 
really indebted to Benoit in those passages in the Eng- 
lish poem for which there seems to be analogues in the 
Historia. In a note in F. J. FurnivaU's Three More 
Parallel Texts of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, pp. a-b, 
he cites a number of passages from the Roman de Troie, 
which were unquestionably the original of some lines of 
Chaucer, and notes that only in the fifth book is use 
made of this auxiliary source. By the same slip I have 
overlooked the edition of Harleian MS., 1239, an indiffer- 
ent copy of an early version of the Troilus, from which I 
have only cited at second-hand, and without due empha- 
sis. The readings cited below, for the most part are not 
found in the other MSS., but it may be grouped on ac- 
count of other characteristics, with Cambridge Univ. Lihr. 
MS. Gg. 4. 27, and St. John's College, Cambridge, MS. L 1. 

P. 7. The variant of T. and C, III. 1327 
[Harl. and St. John's), — 

" In every thing the gret(e) of his sentence," 
modifies the statement regarding the fidel- 
ity with which the original is reproduced, 

155 



156 ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 

and it is to be noted that this explanation 
is in a passage that is found in a di^erent 
place in the other MSS. 

Pp. 8, 122. T, and C, Y. 1044 : — 
" I fynde eke in the story elles where." 
The correct plural form^ " stories/' in the 
revised version refers to both the French 
and Latin sources, while in lines 1037, 
1051, only Benoit needs to be referred to 
as an authority. 

P. 73. With T. and C, I. 293-298, cf. 
II. 533-535, 902. 

Pp. 74, 100, 109-110. T. and C, IV. 
1411. The reading, — 

" Whan he from Delphos, to the grekys sterte," 
adds a detail of the story as it is found in 
Benoit and Guido. 

P. 81. R. de Tr., 5231 has the variant: — 
"Mais ces sorcilles li joignoient." 

P. 83. With r. and C, V. 1004, cf. III. 
1164. 



ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 157 

P. 90, n. T. and C, Y. 1558 : — 
" For as he drow a kynge by the ventaille." 
P. 101. T, and C, IV. 50-56 : — 
" At whiche day was taken Antenor, 
Palidomas and also Menestes, 
Santipe, Sarpedon, Polinestor, 
Polite and eke the Troian dan Ruphes, 
And other lee folk as Phebuosos, 
For al Ector, so that the folk of Troye 
Drede the lese a gret part of hir loye." 

This is evidently a bad copy of a version of 
the stanza in the Filostrato, in which the 
inconsistency noted had not been corrected. 
P. 102. The reading of T. and C, IV. 
57_59^_ 

" To Pryamus whas yeven at his requeste 
A tyme of trew," 

is again the uncorrected version of the 
original. 

P. 105, n. 2. The reading of T. and C, 
IV. 137-138, in Harl 1239 is a translation 
of a line of Boccaccio, in which the later 
version makes a change, not altogether 



158 ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 

happy, by the addition of a detail found in 
the other sources. 

P. 109, n. In a note to Gower's Conf. 
Amant., V. 7451-7455, — 

" This, which Cassandre thanne hihte, 
In al the world as it berth sihte, 
In bokes as men finde write, 
Is that Sibille of whom you wite, 
That alle men yit clepen sage," 

Macaulay refers to, but does not cite a 
passage in the Pantheon of Godfrey of 
Viterbo, which shows that in Chaucer's 
lines there is a misunderstanding of a 
prevalent mediaeval tradition. Godfrey is 
treating of the various sibyls, and of these 
he tells us, " Fuit igitur haec Sibylla Priami 
regis filia, et ex matre Hecuba procreata. 
Yocata est autem in Graeco Tiburtina; 
Latine vero Albunea nomine, vel Cassan- 
dra." Pantheon, Pars X, in Pistorius, 
Scrip tores de Pehus Germanicis, vol. II. 
p. 157 ; cf. Works of Goiver, vol. III. p. 510. 



ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 159 

P. 112. T. and C, IV. 1421 : — 

" Thus wryten thoo that ever the Testes knew." 

P. 116, n. 1. Kittredge {Observations, 
etc., pp. 410, 412, 418) notes the verses 
which are metrically defective in some or 
all the MSS. 

Pp. 119-120, n. The variant of T. and (7., 
V. 1039,— 

" The wych of hym whan Troylus," 

suggests an episode of which I cannot 
state the source. 

P. 121. R. de Tr., 15102-15104: — 

" La destre manche de son braz 
Bone et fresche de ciclaton, 
Li done en leu de gonfanon." 

P. 125. T.and (7., Y. 1095: — 
"Hir name, alias ! ys punysshed so wyde." 

P. 130. T. and C, Y. 1806 {Harl 1239 
and 3943; St. John's): — 

" Ful pitously hym slough the fiers(e) 
Ac(c)hille." 



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